Gunpowder and Firecrackers
by Gerald Tarrant
Summary: Fifteen years after Meteor, Rufus Shinra's odd dreams are only the continuation of AVALANCHE's and Shinra's struggle to piece together the secrets of the Lifestream in a race against time to save the ones they love. RudexTifa, CidxShera, others.
1. Prologue

Hello! This is my first real venture into the world of FFVII fic. I've seen Advent Children but have only played through half of the game thus far. I feel I'm pretty educated on most of the spoilers for this series, but just in case, those of you who are rabid fans should notify me if you see any glaring errors. This fic is set 13 years after Advent Children (except for the prologue, which is 5 years after AC), and is very definitely AU Dirge of Cerberus and all DoC spinoffs. I have also departed from my usual formula of gen fic and attempted to let some pairings take their course.

Happy reading!

**Gunpowder and Firecrackers**  
_Prologue_

She was alone in the bar, behind the counter wiping dishes, when the telephone rang. The thing was one of those newfangled speakerphones, something that Cloud had declared would make their lives simpler because they'd be able to answer the phone and walk around the house at the same time. It was in part, Marlene thought, another gadget they'd installed in an effort to keep him tied down. A vain effort, because Cloud was gone again, like he usually was. She'd come home from school two weeks ago to find Tifa in the kitchen looking thoughtfully sad over a cup of tea.

"I've already resigned myself to the fact that I can't stop him from leaving," Tifa told her calmly when she'd asked. "I just wish he'd tell me where he's going."

Tifa was always calm. Marlene had wanted to tell her that it would be all right, that Cloud would keep coming back as long as Tifa was there.

"Strife Delivery Service," she said politely into the speakerphone, grabbing a pen and paper from the counter. "We deliver anywhere. How may I help you?"

"Lockhart?" said the voice on the other end. Marlene blinked.

"This is Marlene Wallace," she said. "Tifa's currently not able to come to the phone. May I take a message?" A thought struck her. "If this is about the shipment from last week-"

The voice laughed. "Oh, Marlene, is it? This is Reno. From Green Earth Enterprises, in Corel?" he prompted, when the introduction didn't elicit a response.

She finally placed the voice - one of Tifa's and Cloud's friends, from the war seven years ago. "Oh, hello," she said noncommittally. "I can take a message for Tifa if you'd like?"

"I was hoping to reach her other half," the easygoing drawl said. "Don't suppose Strife is there either, is he?"

"I'm sorry," Marlene said, feeling somewhat at a loss. The man's voice was laconic, laid-back, but she could sense the quick mind behind the words, already two steps ahead of her. Tifa had said that they and Reno had once been enemies during the war. From what she knew of him, it was probably good for them that they hadn't remained so. "I can take-"

"Don't want to bother, kid," Reno said, his voice coming from the speakerphone almost as clearly as if he was standing in the kitchen with her. "I'll call back this evening - Ms. Tifa should be back then, hopefully."

"I think so," she said. "She went grocery shopping, actually."

Reno laughed and hung up. She replaced the paper and pen in the magnetic holder on the refrigerator, leaning against the counter and turning slightly as the back door opened.

"Someone in the house with you, Mari?"

She relaxed as Denzel's tall form came ducking into the bar, carrying a paper sack of what she guessed was alcohol. "We had a call for Tifa," she said. "I'll let her know when she comes back."

"Ah." Denzel placed the sack carefully on the counter and began pulling out bottles of rum and gin. "Thanks for doing the dishes. I was going to this morning, and time just ran away from me."

She grinned and punched him in the arm. He had hit a growth spurt this year, at first all lanky arms and legs, and now the missing muscle mass seemed to be filling in. Long hours of loading and unloading boxes with Cloud had probably not hurt, either. "I just got home from school. It's not a big deal. Shall I help you stock before we open?"

"If you would," he said. "Tifa should be back soon. She said she was going to stop and visit a friend on the way home."

---

Her church was the same as it had been all these years. Cloud had collected a donation from some of the old group and they'd repaired the damage done by Loz after the attacks. The pool that had formed after Kadaj's defeat had, to their surprise, remained, so they'd planted some flowers around it, integrating it back into the garden. There was a family of ducks living there now, fatter and happier than any ducks Tifa had ever seen before, most likely the influence of Aeris' healing water.

Barret had halfheartedly proposed erecting a marker of some sorts so that people could pay their respects, but they'd ultimately decided against it. The church was memorial enough for a life that could never be forgotten, her flowers a living legacy.

"I thought you might be here."

She whirled, more in surprise that someone else would be in the church at this hour than at her old combat instincts kicking in. Five years and already she had gotten used to not jumping at shadows. Her eyes took in the tall, bald man standing several paces behind her outside the plot of flowers, dressed casually in slacks and a leather jacket, trademark sunglasses in place as always even though it was cloudy outside.

"You scared me," she said in relief, standing and carefully stepping out of the garden. "How are you, Rude? We haven't seen you in months."

"Reno called your pub to say I was stopping by," he said, flicking a hand by way of greeting. "Your... daughter said you were gone. I couldn't reach you on your phone."

She was amused at the hesitant way he said daughter, but she supposed it was the best term they had for Marlene at the moment. "I turned it off," Tifa said quietly, gesturing around her at the church. "It seems a bit inappropriate to have it on here."

Rude smiled slightly, and she wondered as always what his eyes looked like behind the glasses, if they were smiling too. He had not changed much since they had become uneasy allies at the end of the war. She was comfortable now around Reno's drawl, around Elena and her chattering. Rude was so quiet that she never knew what he was thinking.

"It's about Cloud," he said.

Tifa stiffened. "Cloud?"

Rude sighed, removing the sunglasses. His eyes, she saw, were red-rimmed and he looked like he had not slept in days. She moved towards him with a slight gasp and he waved one hand to stall her. "He was due into Corel three days ago," he said. "We received a call from him when he left Edge. He said he would stop at Fort Condor and be in town by Wednesday." He hesitated. "When he hadn't shown up by Monday, Tseng phoned Barret. He hadn't heard a thing."

Tifa nodded. "Cloud always calls Barret when he's going by Corel."

"Thus why I'm here," Rude finished, replacing his sunglasses with finality, as if that confession had taken all the words out of him for the moment.

"He didn't tell me where he was going," Tifa said quietly, looking away from the former Turk into the pool between the flowers, as if it could give her answers. "He usually doesn't, when he goes away for a long time."

Rude said nothing, just watching her behind his glasses. She stared into the water for a long time until she was sure that she had blinked away the vestiges of tears, then looked back at him and smiled. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm being inhospitable. Would you like to come back with me to the bar? We can talk about this after dinner. Marlene is making the house special tonight, and her cooking's quite good."

Rude smiled slightly at that. "Very well," he said. "I accept."

--

Marlene was a short, sprite-like teenage girl with an infectious smile, older than Rude had pictured but still young enough that he could place her as the girl who had been captured by Kadaj and his minions. She welcomed Rude with a smile of recognition, called to the tall boy who was standing in the back of the kitchen, drying dishes, to set an extra place for the table.

He wasn't surprised when Tifa beckoned him upstairs to the tiny sitting room on the second floor. She waved at him to sit, but she did not, so he did not either. He didn't believe in sitting while a lady talked. It was disrespectful.

"How are things?" she said finally, staring out the small window into the greyness that was Edge and then farther, the under construction metropolis of New Midgar on a cloudy day. "I would say that I have been meaning to call you, but that would be somewhat of a lie."

She was more beautiful than he remembered. "People grow apart," he said. "It's natural."

"I don't think it's that," Tifa said thoughtfully. "We just have our own lives. I'm content with mine and I think the rest of you are content with yours."

"It's going well," he told her. "We had a large donation from a nonprofit group in Kalm about two months ago, so we're looking at some more housing and maybe a community center. Most people in the town have jobs now. Some have cars. We had two weddings last month."

Tifa shook her head. "I marvel at Rufus' ability to turn things around."

"Rufus has always been like that," he said. "When he wanted to start Green Earth, decided to headquarter it in Corel, people called him insane. Cloud flat-out turned him down."

"He thought Rufus still wanted to rebuild the old Shinra. Apparently that's what Rufus had been telling him before. It wasn't quite the same thing."

"Kadaj changed his mind," Rude said. "Or, rather, made it up for him. He seems more content doing this than he was with Shinra."

Tifa smiled crookedly. "Rufus, a philanthropist. Who would have thought?"

"I wouldn't quite call him that. The money's still coming in. He still gets to tell people what to do. I'd simply say the balance of power is...well. More balanced. We create jobs, build houses, get people back on their feet, something Shinra never did. At least not while I was with them."

Tifa was quiet for a long time. "What was Cloud going to Corel for?" she said at last.

It pained him somewhat to see her standing there with the weight on her heart and trying not to show it. It was part of why he had admired her from afar, because she was strong. "I don't know," he said. "It was Rufus and Tseng who wanted him there. Reno and I were dispatched when he never made it."

"Are you going to look for him?"

"We're in the process. I doubt he has come to any serious harm." _Though trouble seems to follow that young man_, he added silently, but did not say it out loud.

She placed one hand up to the glass, closing her eyes. "Thank you."

"It's the least we can do," he said, "for the family of the man who saved the Planet."


	2. Chapter 1: Tifa

**Eight Years Later**

_I. Tifa_

"Good morning, Strife Delivery Service. We deliver anywhere. How may I help you?"

The man on the other end of the phone wanted to send a shipment from Edge to Gold Saucer. Tifa gave him the quotes, told him that the service would take three days and the messenger would be available the day after tomorrow. The eight-year old speakerphone crackled and hissed, and she could barely hear him over the sound of the static.

The doorbell rang.

"Please hold," she told the customer, and went to answer the door.

It was Rude with a bouquet of flowers.

For a moment she stood blinking up at the tall man standing in her doorway politely, doffing his hat to her and waiting for her permission to enter as if he did not have a key to the house. "Hello, beautiful," he said. "I had a few days of travel time. I thought I would come see you on the way."

Tifa was flattered, taking the flowers and standing on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. "You're so thoughtful," she said. "Come on in. Marlene and Denzel are away on deliveries, but-"

"I also came to take you out to dinner," he interrupted, bending down to remove his shoes. "If you'd like to join me, that is."

"I'd love to," she told him sincerely. "Let me take care of this call and I'll be right back."

She hashed out the rates with the man on the other end of the line, rang off, jotted a note to Denzel when he got back tomorrow about the Gold Saucer delivery, and stuck it on the refrigerator. She looked down at herself, dressed in sweats, a dirty apron and tattered house slippers, hair bound in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. There was time for a quick shower before dinner, she decided. She turned to exit the room and her eye caught the picture on the desk by the door, standing guard over a pile of old receipts, deliver confirmations, to-be-filed reports.

The faded photo showed Cloud, one arm around Tifa's shoulders, one of his rare smiles on his face, Marlene and Denzel as children grinning happily in the foreground with the bright lights of Gold Saucer as backdrop. She picked up the photo, brushing dust off the frame. She should have put this one away, just like she'd put the rest of the pictures away eight years ago when Cloud had disappeared, but this was the only one they'd had of the four of them. It was as if putting that picture away would destroy the family they'd almost built together. She reached out a finger, tracing the familiar outlines of his face. The dreams still haunted her sometimes, dreams that insisted that Cloud could not be dead, though the practical part of her rejected that, knew she had to go on living like Cloud would have wanted her to.

_I'm not one of those people who'll die quietly in bed_, he'd told her some time ago, after Sephiroth, after Kadaj, when she had expressed hope that now life would settle down. _I don't want to hurt you any more, Tifa._

"Tifa?"

She put the picture down guiltily, but knew that Rude had seen. He'd taken off the sunglasses and his eyes flicked to the picture, back to her. "If you're not feeling well," he said, "we don't have to-"

"I'm fine," she told him quietly, going to him and feeling his arms wrap around her with a gentleness that she'd never felt in Cloud's embrace. Cloud's love for her had been passionate, demanding, always with an intensity that spoke of his fear that their time was running out, even though the war was just a memory now. When he'd finally told her loved her, two years after facing down Sephiroth again, the expression on his face had almost broken her heart.

_What'll it be? A memory, or us?_

Rude had never told her that he loved her. His feelings were as soft-spoken as everything about him, as if he sensed the barrier Tifa had erected around herself after Cloud's disappearance. Her first priority was Marlene and Denzel, she told him, and everything else was secondary to the children's happiness. Rude said he understood. She knew he did, as much as he was able, and she was grateful for that.

He wasn't Cloud, but Cloud could not be replaced, just like Aeris could not be replaced.

He took her out to a nice restaurant in the heart of New Midgar, in one of the districts that had sprung up with the rebuilding effort. Rufus and Green Earth had been behind that too, one of his efforts to reach power back into Edge and the New Midgar area, though he'd actually scrapped any plans of building a new branch in Midgar itself. "People would be nervous," Rude had said. "They don't want another Shinra."

The less Tifa saw of Rufus the better, but she did admit that his money and flair for style had produced some breathtaking results for the Midgar skyline. The heart of the city had come a long way since their escape from the Shinra building years ago. The ruined square had been rebuilt, the slums torn down and neat rows of public housing put up, the central plaza turned into a glittering spectacle of glass and metal and sparkling lights over the large, green park in the place where Shinra's headquarters had been. Rude ordered for them, splurging for a three course dinner of roasted duck and greens and chocolate fudge cake for dessert. She had a glass of wine. They talked about lighthearted things, like Reeve and Cid's joint airship business that was doing so well that they were considering expanding down south. Barret's new oil company, now working hand in hand with Green Earth, though apparently Barret was sick of the corporate life now and was considering retiring and going on a long vacation. Reno's girlfriend, two years older than him, an Icicle girl and Green Earth's director of outreach, who complained that Corel was too hot and smelled like fungus. _What fungus?_ Tifa said. _I think it smells like sulfur._

Elena, Rude said, had been promoted to head of Green Earth security and Tseng had taken over Green Earth's financial programs. Tifa seemed to remember something about them dating, but when she asked Rude, he shook his head, said there had never been too much to that. Everyone was too busy.

Just like me, Tifa thought, knowing deep in her heart that it was not quite the truth, that she kept herself busy in order to avoid thinking too hard. Perhaps it was that way with all of them, too, even Reeve and Cid.

"Are you staying for a few days?" she asked Rude, and he shook his head with a smile.

"I'm on my way to Wutai in the morning. I owe the lady a favor."

Tifa raised one eyebrow. "What could Yuffie possibly have done for you to owe her a favor?"

"She lent us some money," Rude said. "And keeps sending nagging notes reminding us that read, and I quote, 'You lazy asses owe me big time.' "

Tifa couldn't help it. She laughed. Rude smiled as well, lifting his glass of wine into the air in a slight toast.

"To friends," he said.

"To friends," she responded, and for a moment she felt all the strain of life melt away - the strain of running someone else's business, raising two teenagers, still mourning for the man she had lost. It was just her and Rude and the Midgar skyline with promises of things to come. The sweet, tangy wine burned its way down her throat, and for a moment she wished she had the guts to ask Rude to stay the night.

But Marlene would be home, and she'd traded in Cloud's queen-sized bed and downgraded back to a twin so she had room to fit some of the delivery's file cabinets in a corner of what had been their master bedroom, and Rude was leaving early in the morning. And besides, she did not want their relationship to degenerate into nights of sex and mornings-after. After eight years of letters, long-distance calls, monthly visits, late-night talks and vacations together, Tifa had realized that she did not love him like he wanted her to love him.

Rude seemed oblivious to her wandering train of thought, sipping his wine slowly and looking out at Midgar. "It's quite beautiful," he said.

"Thanks to Green Earth and Rufus," she said. "I know I give you a hard time, but I suppose even he has a good side."

"You still don't trust him."

She folded her hands in front of her and set the wine down. "It's not that I don't trust him," she said slowly. "It's just that...I can't quite believe the man who willingly let the Planet go down a course of destruction has really had such a change of heart as to want to single-handedly rebuild it for the good of the people."

"We were on the same side, in part," Rude reminded her. "Both of our groups wanted Sephiroth gone."

"Only a sadistic madman would have wanted to let Sephiroth go, and my opinion of Rufus isn't that low," she said. "Sorry, but could we not talk about this over dinner?"

"I apologize," Rude said, and drained the last of his wine. "Would you like some more dessert?"

"I'm full, thank you." She pushed the plate away from her and wiped her mouth. "Shouldn't you be getting back to your hotel? It's late."

He glanced at her. "Trying to get rid of me?"

Tifa felt her cheeks flush. "It's a long trip to Wutai, even by airship."

"I have something for you," he said abruptly.

Her eyes darted from the luminous Midgar skyline back to him, surprised. He reached down into one pants pocket, fumbling for something nervously. Rude, nervous?

"Take this," he said. "Please."

It was a small box, just the right size for a ring. She took it with shaking hands, her stomach in knots as she opened it, already knowing what she'd find inside. The diamonds sparkled in the low lights of the restaurant and she carefully lifted the ring from where it was nestled inside the silk folds, trying to find the words to say and failing.

"It might seem a bit sudden," Rude said hesitantly. He sounded tinny, far away. "But I've been thinking about this for a while, Tifa. It's hard for us to see each other, but there's no other woman I want to be with. I wouldn't ask you to leave Midgar, or the business, or Marlene and Denzel. We could work something out. I don't know. But it's been almost eight years, a long time. I don't want you to be sad anymore. I've wanted to ask you many times, but I was afraid you would say no. I just...well." He stopped, as if realizing that he was rambling. She'd never heard him sound so out of control, unsure of himself, like a child.

"Rude," she said softly, cradling the ring and the box in her hands. "Rude, I don't know if-"

"It's all right if you don't think it'll work out," he said hurriedly, cutting her off. "I just decided I had to do what I had to do, and I couldn't wait any longer. I've been carrying that thing around for a year now, can you believe it? I just couldn't work up the nerve."

There was nothing she could say to that naked confession. She'd always thought that when the day came, Cloud's face would flash before her eyes and she would hear his voice in her mind, accusing her of forgetting him. But there was nothing, just a faint regret that things had not worked out the way both of them wanted them to. Cloud was dead, and Rude was here now before her, promising her safety, a way out of the black hole of the delivery business, finally a father figure for Denzel and an extra security blanket for Marlene if something ever happened to Barret.

_I can't save anyone_, Cloud had said, and she'd heard the unspoken words behind that confession. _I have no right to. I can't even save myself._

"It's all right, Rude," she said. "It's fine. I accept."

He was silent, and she thought that her curt response had hurt his feelings. But when she looked up at him, he was staring at her with a stunned sort of smile. "You'll marry me?"

A memory did flash before her eyes then, that night when Marlene and Denzel had been captured by Kadaj and Cloud had begged Rude and Reno to go save her in his place. She'd confronted him then, accused him of running away.

It was time for her to stop running.

"Yes, Rude," she said, slipping the ring onto her finger. "I will."

--

She had wondered afterwards if Rude would ask to come in when they arrived back at the silent house. But he simply kissed her goodnight on the front steps, promising to call when he reached Wutai, and she had clung to him a minute, wishing him a safe journey there and back to Corel. She had lain there in bed for a long time, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Her dreams that night were plagued by a nightmare she had not had in a long time - the reactor at Nibelheim, and Sephiroth.

The incessant ringing of the phone woke her the next morning, and it was only when she rolled over and glanced sleepily at the clock that she realized she had overslept. She tangled one foot in the bed sheets, gave up and dragged them over with her to the phone on the edge of the desk.

"Hello?" she croaked.

"Tifa! Hey girl, congratulations! Heard the news!"

She blinked, confused. "News?"

"You and Rude? Man, never thought that guy would actually dig up the guts to ask you. He ordered that ring a year and a half ago, you know!"

Her brain finally began working, and she remembered that last night, Rude had asked her to marry him, and she had accepted. "Is this Reno?" she said hoarsely. Her throat did not seem to be working properly.

"Guilty as charged," Reno told her cheerfully. "You guys worked everything out? Are you gonna move out to Corel? Would be nice for Mari to see her dad more often."

"I - I don't know," she said hesitantly, rubbing her eyes and reaching down to untangle her foot from the sheets. "Sorry, I just woke up."

"Aha!" Reno said a bit triumphantly. "Caught you in the act!"

One of the things she hated about talking to Reno was that his train of thought moved so quickly that it was impossible for her to follow. "Reno," she said, "I have no idea what you're talking about. If it's about Rude, he left for Wutai really early this morning. He didn't spend the night."

He sounded disappointed. "Oh. I see."

She had to laugh at that. "Sorry. You should know by now I'm a sad excuse for gossip."

"No way!" He sounded so genuinely excited that she began to be alarmed. "You're the hottest gossip there is. Everyone already knows! Cid says he's got a deal on some chocobos for your wedding present."

"How are you doing?" she said, anxious to get the spotlight off of her and onto some more neutral topic. _Chocobos?_

Reno snorted. "The usual. Broke up with the girlfriend last week. It was never gonna work, anyway. They're sending her back up to the frozen wastelands for the new northern branch."

The rapid changes of subject were giving her a headache. "I need to go to work," she said. "Thanks for phoning, Reno."

"No problem, babe. Gimme a call any time! Rude should be back from Nibelheim in a few days."

"Nibelheim?" she said sharply.

There was a pause. "Nibelheim? I meant Wutai." Another pause, and then he said hurriedly, "Anyway, later." The line went dead.

She held the phone in her hand, staring at it intently until the screen went blank. "Nibelheim, huh?" she said softly, The dream sprang into her mind vividly once more - the burning village, Sephiroth's wild, mad Mako eyes. Zack had not been in the dream, and neither had Cloud. It was just her and Sephiroth, her holding the buster sword, her screaming at him, _What about my family? My hometown? My pain? _

Does it mean nothing at all?

She finally flipped the phone shut and went to take a shower, opened the ground floor windows and let the breeze move through the house. "Marlene?" she called. She looked out the window. The girl's bike was in the driveway, but Denzel's was still gone.

"Tifa?"

Marlene was eating breakfast, a plate of sausages and eggs in her hand as she emerged into the kitchen doorway. "I'm surprised you're up," Tifa said, smiling and kissing her good morning on the forehead. "Did you get in late?"

The girl gave her a tired smile. "I did, but there's a delivery due in an hour, and I wanted to get an early start."

"Don't run yourself into the ground," Tifa said, moving to get the milk out of the refrigerator. "I promised your dad I'd take good care of you."

"I could say the same of you," Marlene returned. Tifa's hand stilled on the milk carton and she turned, closed the refrigerator door.

"Marlene, Rude and I are getting married."

She wasn't sure what reaction she expected, but instead, Marlene simply smiled and said, "I wondered what was taking so long."

Tifa gaped at her. "What?"

"Honestly," Marlene said, "I admire your devotion to Cloud, but he wouldn't have wanted you to mope around as long as you've been doing. Papa always said that both the greatest strength and flaw you had was your loyalty. Rude's a nice guy. He's been good for you. I hope he'll continue to be."

Tifa turned around to lean on the countertop. "I just didn't want to leave you and Denzel alone."

"We'll make it," Marlene said calmly. "We're big kids. Don't worry, the delivery service is in good hands." She paused, and said a bit hesitantly, "We'll make Cloud proud of us."

"You're all automatically assuming I'll be moving to Corel," Tifa said, and Marlene shrugged.

"It's natural, isn't it? I really don't think Rude would want to leave you here."

It was a bit unnerving to see how the girl was taking all this in stride. Another memory surfaced, this one of child Marlene in Aeris' church, standing her ground and refusing to leave until Cloud came home. But it was no use arguing. All her friends, even Marlene, seemed to have her life figured out for her, and perhaps it didn't count that things were even more confusing to her now than they had been during the pursuit of Sephiroth fifteen years ago. She'd been so young then, and all she'd wanted was to be near Cloud and the memory of that childhood promise he'd made her.

She still wanted to be near Cloud, but that promise had vanished into the smoking ruins of Nibelheim.

"I'm going to go get the mail," she said, deciding that she wasn't hungry after all. "Drive safely, Mari."


	3. Chapter 2: Yuffie

_II. Yuffie_

The lady of Wutai was writing a letter when the phone rang.

It was raining in Wutai, torrents coming down in drenching curtains outside, and there had been a particularly loud clap of thunder just before the phone started its shrill beeping. Yuffie had almost forgotten she'd had the thing. She kept it in its charger by her bedside just in case, but no one ever called.

This particular letter was to the management of Green Earth, attention of one Rufus Shinra, the latest letter in a long line of regular mailings. She wasn't sure how the letter writing competition had started. Perhaps it was when she had lent the startup company some money with an anonymous donation, deciding that Rufus, who she had never liked and had downright hated at one point in time, was finally doing something right. Wutai hadn't been hit by Weapon, but she didn't see anything wrong with supporting something for the good of the Planet. Her father would have approved.

Two weeks later, she'd gotten back a handwritten page from Rufus Shinra himself, formally thanking her for the money and stamped with his official seal. Her response to that had been one sentence: _I thought I'd checked the damn 'anonymous' box on the donation slip._ The next week brought another letter, in which Rufus wrote, _The lady of Wutai is never anonymous._

That had amused Yuffie, and she'd decided to write him back, and for some reason, he had responded in kind. Perhaps she amused him, too. It was odd to think of herself as a friend of Rufus Shinra, when their friendship was based on the odd letter once every few weeks. They'd started out with polite exchanges of pleasantries, inquiries about business. Thirteen years later, they had grown comfortable enough, at least on paper, to argue, joke, and insult like old friends. They were both rebuilding something - Rufus rebuilding the world, Yuffie concentrating all her efforts on making Wutai back into the city it used to be. Rufus had sent out notices via Reeve and Cid's airships that any old Midgar inhabitants who had Wutai blood were welcome home, and to Yuffie's surprise, hundreds had responded. She'd thanked Rufus by sending him more money. They had never met in person nor had she ever felt the need to phone him. It was like having an old-fashioned penpal who happened to be one of the most powerful men in the world.

Rufus had taken the liberty of responding to her last correspondence with a ten page rambling letter on...something. Yuffie wasn't sure if he'd started out with a subject, and the letter sounded like it had been written in spurts over several weeks. That was usually how it was with him when he was preoccupied, and Green Earth's new expansion branch into the Great Glacier area was taking up much of his time. Parts of the letter were randomly dotted with business strategies and financial formulas, which she glanced over and dismissed. Other parts were easier to understand - small talk about the weather and idle gossip about the former Turks, inquiries into Wutai's goings-on, and something odd at the end about Nibelheim. _I'm sending Rude to confirm_, Rufus had written. _I hope it's nothing, but it's best not to ignore hunches, no matter how far-fetched they may seem._

The phone's shrill ringing cut her off in mid-thought and she cursed the half-finished sentence on the paper as her fountain pen bled off a dark spot of ink at the end of a word. She scrambled to the screaming thing, jammed it to her ear.

"Yo," she said. "Hope this is important, whoever it is, cause you just made me ruin a perfectly good piece of paper."

"Yuffie, it's Tifa. Is my number not showing up on your screen?"

"Oh," she said, and felt dumb. She hadn't recognized the other woman's voice for a moment, a fact that bothered her when she realized it. "Hi, Tifa. What's up?"

Tifa sounded hesitant. "I'm sorry about your paper. Writing a letter?"

Yuffie laughed. "Don't worry about it. The ringing startled me, that's all. I can count one hand the number of calls I get on the thing monthly. How are you? I haven't talked to you in a while."

"I'm fine," Tifa said, though the response sounded canned, forced. "The business is going well. How are you?"

"Wutai's busy as usual," Yuffie said. She paused, unsure of what to say to her old friend. Maybe it was her fault for not being good at keeping in touch on the phone. None of the others, besides Rufus, were any good at letters, and Yuffie wasn't a big fan of computers. Eight years ago, when they'd lost Cloud, she'd flown over to Midgar as part of the search party and as moral support for Tifa, but that was the last they'd seen of each other since. "Is anything wrong? No one ever calls me unless there's a crisis."

There was a pause. "Rude and I are getting married," Tifa said.

"Whoa," she said, deciding to go for the direct route. "Finally? What took so long?"

There was a tired laugh. "That's what the general reaction is to the news." She sounded resigned, not exactly the reaction Yuffie would have expected from a newly engaged woman. Then again, things were different where Tifa was concerned. It was Yuffie's opinion that she'd waited for Cloud far too long, but she would never say that out loud, as if giving words to the thought would somehow diminish all that Cloud had been.

"So spill the juicy details," Yuffie said. "When, where, how, that kind of thing? I'm guessing this is recent news, as the great Rufus didn't mention anything about this in his last letter."

"You two are still penpal-ing?" Tifa said, sounding a bit more cheery. "Maybe I should be the one asking what's taking so long."

Yuffie snorted. "We're friends. I've never even formally met Rufus in person without us trying to kill each other. Anyway, we're not talking about me. What about you?"

"Rude's not there, is he?" Tifa asked abruptly.

Yuffie blinked in surprised. "Well, no. You'd know his whereabouts better than me. I haven't had any visitors in months, not since good ol' Vincent came breezing in three months ago on his way to Junon."

Silence. "I...see," she said. Yuffie frowned.

"Okay, what's going on?"

"Rude had said he was on his way to see you in Wutai when he left Midgar yesterday morning. I got a call from Reno the same day. He'd phoned to congratulate me on the news, and accidentally let slip that Rude was actually going to Nibelheim. I thought I would confirm with you...just in case..." she trailed off.

"Nibelheim?" Yuffie said, gripping the phone tightly. "What the hell?"

"I don't know. I was hoping to find out. I'm assuming that Rufus is behind all of this, but I don't know how far he'd entrust this kind of information."

"Not to me," Yuffie said. "We're penpals, sort of. That's about it. He wouldn't-" She stopped, inhaled sharply. "Wait a second."

Rufus' ten page novel was the first manuscript in the file cabinet next to her desk, and she flipped through it until she found the reference. "He does mention something about Nibelheim in here," she said. "And sending Rude to check it out, hoping his hunch is wrong. That's all it says. Weird. That city's a virtual ghost town now. I wouldn't go near it if you gave me all the materia in the world."

"I thought so," Tifa said, and then was silent for so long that Yuffie would have wondered if the phone had cut out if she hadn't been able to hear the other woman's breathing. She didn't have to be psychic to know what Tifa was thinking.

"You think it's about Cloud," she said flatly.

"I do." Another long pause. "Yuffie, I-"

"I'm not getting anything out of Rufus that he doesn't want to give out," Yuffie said sharply. "The man's more hardheaded than the damn rocks outside my window. The cute Yuffie doesn't work on him, and neither does the nagging Yuffie. He was head of Shinra - I mean, goddamn, talk about the ability to keep secrets."

"Rude said something about you having lent them some money."

"That was twelve years and hundreds of letters ago. Green Earth is going to be more influential than Shinra ever was, and in a good way. I mention the money every once in a while, but it's become more of an inside joke than anything. We've both done each other favors."

Silence again. "Please, Yuffie," Tifa said.

It was the pleading in Tifa's voice that frightened Yuffie. She'd never heard Tifa plead like that - not the scared, lost sound she heard over the phone line at that moment, like a child. Tifa was the strongest woman Yuffie knew, unshakeable through Aeris' death, through Cloud's disappearance, always their ray of hope through the dark times.

But she knew what Tifa was thinking. If Rufus thought that Cloud might be alive, or if he'd discovered what had happened to him - Yuffie could understand why he'd want to hide it from them until he was sure one way or the other, but the secret was out now, and it would be more cruel, in her opinion, to keep Tifa guessing. Rufus had mentioned that he hoped he was wrong, and that did not sound promising, but it would be good for them all to know once and for all how their friend had died.

Which meant that asking him in a letter would be too slow. She'd have to use the phone.

_Damn, Reno, when I next see you I'm going to kick your ass._

"All right, Tifa," she said slowly, "I'll call and ask him."

The other woman let out a breath. "Thank you, Yuffie. I owe you."

"You all owe me lots," she retorted jokingly with more vigor than she felt. Thirty-one and she was already feeling the old age creeping in. Or maybe she was just tired. She'd had bad dreams last night, and Tifa's call wasn't helping her sanity any. "No, really. We've all been worried about you. I know I'm crap at keeping in touch these days, and I don't think the others are much better, but even Vincent's been asking about you, and you know how he is."

"I'm sorry," Tifa said. "If I'd known I was such a gossip topic, I would have probably tried to clean my image up a little."

Yuffie laughed. "Your image is clean. That's part of the problem." The unfinished letter on her desk caught her eye and she swallowed. "I gotta go...guess I'll try dialing that direct line our former Shinra president gave me and see where that gets me. Funny, it's been on all his stationary for the last thirteen years, and I've never had the urge to use it."

"I really appreciate-"

"Yeah, yeah," Yuffie said. "Don't you fret. We'll get this sorted out. Say hi to Mari and Denzel for me, wontcha?"

"Thank you," Tifa said again, and hung up.

Yuffie stared at the letter on her desk again, the rain outside her window, again at the letter, then swore softly and got out of her chair, padding over the tatami and out the sliding doors of the traditional room she used as a sort of private office. The hallways of the old house were quiet, the rain muffled, her footsteps silent over the reed mats. The ancient shrine at the end of the wing was just as quiet, with only the faint flickering of candles at the far end of the chamber and the smell of musky incense wafting through the air as she stepped up and entered the room.

She folded her legs into the traditional seiza position a respectful distance away from Da Chao's carved form, bending in prayer, her mind whirling with questions. _Never come to the god in chaos_, her father had cautioned. _Have your mind clear, and the answers will be clear._

Yuffie knelt a long time trying to clear her mind and failing, trying to dig out exactly what she was searching for, fumbling blindly in the dark. Images danced in front of her closed eyelids - Ifrit's summoning hellfire, the ghostly light of the Temple of the Ancients, Cloud's Mako eyes, the Shinra building collapsing as they fled the heart of Midgar one last time. At the time, she had hoped with all her heart that Rufus had died along with his organization. Now, she was fervently glad that he had not. How was she supposed to ask the god to grant her wishes if she wasn't even sure what she should want? She pictured the box in the corner of her dusty closet where the Conformer lay wrapped in scraps of used silks, where she'd stashed it eight years ago in the hopes she'd never had to use it again.

It was useless, she decided finally, and got to her feet with a slight wobble and the feelings of pins and needles in her toes. It had been a long time since she'd gone to pay her respects. Life got in the way, or something like that, because making that excuse was easier than admitting that she'd been lazy. After her father had died four years ago, life simply seemed slow and drab.

She wandered slowly back down the hall. The lacquered red walls of her study were dark with the greyness of rain and Yuffie went to the light switch, flicking it on. The darkness eased a little. She shuffled to the filing cabinet again, pulling out the first page of Rufus' letter, which began as it always did under the formal letterhead: To the lady of Wutai. She couldn't remember if he'd ever used her name. That was Rufus - all mock formality and flashy showmanship covering a mind so brilliant that Yuffie wondered why he bothered with anyone, least of all her. Yuffie Kisaragi figured herself to be pretty smart, but she wasn't near interesting or powerful enough for the attentions of someone who had once ruled the world, and it wasn't like Rufus to give friendship for nothing.

Maybe that was why she'd never phoned him. The mere exchange of words on paper was detached enough that she could tell herself that it didn't matter, just in case this whole thing turned out to be Rufus Shinra's idea of one big joke.

She grabbed the phone from where it still lay on the desk, took a deep breath, and punched in the phone number at the top of the paper. Her hands were sweating, she realized as the rings echoed in her ear. Maybe he'd changed phone numbers, or maybe he wasn't there.

A click as the line picked up. "Green Earth enterprises, president's office," the pleasant female voice said. "How may I direct your call?"

"Uh," Yuffie said, and cleared her throat. "I'd like to speak to Rufus Shinra please."

"May I ask who's calling?"

Yuffie's mouth quirked in an involuntary smile. "Tell him it's the lady of Wutai," she said.

"Please hold," the woman said, and some terrible elevator music came on. It sounded like the chocobo music from Gold Saucer, and she stared out her window at the rain-drenched mountains, taking deep breaths. It was all right. It wasn't like they were strangers, and this was for Tifa.

"This is a pleasant surprise."

His voice was deep, smooth and melodious, and he actually sounded pleased. Yuffie wasn't quite what she had expected, and all her carefully planned dialogue sounded forced now to her. What should I say? she thought frantically.

"Hello?" Rufus questioned. "Am I still on the line?"

"Shinra," she said, "How are you?"

"I'm fine," he said, falling back into what sounded like a formal, stilted response. "A little busy, as always."

Silence. It was that terrible awkward phone silence that Yuffie hated with a passion, and she remembered belatedly that it was mostly why she avoided the phone like the plague. She cleared her throat. "So, um-" she began, just as he said "So just what-"

They both stopped. Then Rufus laughed, a rich, sophisticated sound that reminded her just how inferior her station in life had been to his, before Sephiroth had reduced the rest of the world to the same level. "This is a bit awkward."

"Yeah," she said, feeling a little relieved he was feeling it too. "It is. Um. Honestly, this isn't just a call to say what's up or anything."

He chuckled again. "We've been exchanging mail for thirteen years without phoning, and I didn't think you would start now."

"Why is that?" Yuffie challenged, and then mentally cursed herself for not thinking before she spoke. But it was too late; the words were out.

"I don't quite know," Rufus said lightly. He seemed to be brushing off her question as idle curiosity, and Yuffie felt partly relieved, partly annoyed. "Perhaps neither of us are phone people. What brings you calling on this sunny afternoon?"

"It's raining in Wutai," she said peevishly. "And it's about Tifa."

After a moment, he murmured quietly, "I figured as much."

"So you're one step ahead of the rest of us," Yuffie said, emboldened now with righteous indignation. So he was stringing Tifa and the rest of them along. The rest of them, fine. But to do it to Tifa was unacceptable in Yuffie's book after all the woman had been through. "It's high time you brought us up to speed. What the hell are you doing in Nibelheim, and why haven't you told Tifa?"

Another silence. "It's not something I want to talk about over the phone," Rufus said finally. "Please don't mention the name of that town again during this conversation. It's not safe."

"Not safe?" Yuffie retorted. "What-" She stopped as the memory of Kadaj and his little toady minions resurfaced, how they'd used their own PHS technology to track them. "Right," she said grudgingly. "That doesn't do a thing for the answer to my question."

"You know," Rufus said after another long pause, "this isn't quite how I imagined our first real conversation to be."

Yuffie hadn't ever imagined one at all, and the simple fact that Rufus had now admitted that he had was a bit startling. "Shinra-"

"I have another call," he said abruptly. "Business, so it might take a while. I tell you what, lady - if you want to know what's going on, come to Corel."

Several possible answers to that passed through Yuffie's brain, none of them suitable for polite company. "What?" she finally sputtered. "Shinra, you're out of your goddamn mind."

"I'll see you in Corel," he returned, and the phone went dead.

She swore, clenching her fists, resisting the urge to throw the phone across the room. Rufus Shinra had been the leader of the world and apparently he still thought he could use that power to make people do what he wanted. That was about to stop right now. If he thought he could make Yuffie Kisaragi bow to his wishes, he was dead wrong.

"It's not like I can just take a damn vacation," she muttered to the rain outside, kicking the wall more in frustration than in real anger. It wasn't safe, Rufus said. What wasn't safe? Why all the secrecy now, when peace had reigned for thirteen years and life was getting back to normal? There were more questions than answers, and Yuffie didn't like that either.

Her eyes went to the unfinished letter on her desk, and she marched to it, crumpling up and preparing to make a clean shot of it into the trash basket. _I called and asked him_, she told herself, clenching the wadded paper in her hands. _That's what I promised Tifa. Nothing more._

_I'll see you in Corel._

Fifteen years ago Yuffie Kisaragi the materia hoarder would have brushed all of it off as someone else's problem. But she was the lady of Wutai now, thirty-one, responsible. It wasn't any of that that killed her - it was the fact that there were people now who counted on her, people who trusted her to keep promises. Rufus Shinra was an enigma still, but Tifa Lockhart was still one of those people she had sworn to protect, who she would give her life for without a second thought.

She threw the crumpled letter against the wall instead, where it made a thunking sound that wasn't as satisfying as she would have liked, and went to pack.


	4. Chapter 3: Reno

_III. Reno_

Reno hated lying.

He hated lying even more than he hated letting his enemies live, and both friend and foe knew his skills in combat. But as he headed east on the long, low motorcycle that hummed under his hands and whipped the wind into his face as it roared down the newly paved road from Corel to Costa del Sol, he thought again of Tifa, and his "accidental" slip as he'd let her know that it was not Wutai that Rude was headed toward.

Why had he done it? He wasn't quite sure. Rude was still his best pal after all these years, and he knew that Rude would have wanted more than anything to keep this a secret from Tifa even if Rufus hadn't ordered it. But something about it just wasn't right. Tifa had been hurt more than anyone, and Reno didn't think that keeping this a secret from her was something that would pan out in the long run.

It was just one of those feelings that he got sometimes.

The pistol hanging from his belt was heavy and completely unnecessary, but Rufus had insisted he carry it anyway. It was practically antique, taken from Rufus' secret storage closet the night before Reno had headed out, and when he'd examined it carefully after going back to his rooms, he saw that the old Shinra markings were still finely engraved into the silver hilt. For some reason, that made him even more uneasy than he had been before about this whole thing.

Rufus hadn't explained anything. He'd told Reno to deliver a parcel of papers two days ago to the new-city sprawl of Baring just south of Corel, and then said that Reno was to be on vacation for the next week. Mandatory vacation, he emphasized. On no conditions are you to come back to Corel until you're finished relaxing. That's an order. Reno had been sorely tempted to open that parcel of papers before he'd thrown them in an unmarked mailbox on some shady side-street in the Baring slums, but he'd resisted the urge and sped out of the city with even more questions.

Perhaps Rufus had intended for him and Rude to talk. Or perhaps he thought that sending Reno on mandatory vacation would stop them from talking. Whatever the case, Reno wasn't about to let his best friend get the upper hand, and Rude hadn't been too recalcitrant. They'd arranged to meet in a week in Costa del Sol, and Reno had decided that he'd worm the whole thing out of Rude one way or another.

It was another half hour before he saw the charming gates of the seaside town in the distance, another ten minutes before he had his bike parked outside one of the newer taverns lining the sunny, narrow, cobblestone streets and was seated at the bar downing a drink. Tseng had always disapproved of him drinking and driving, but if Rude showed up, Reno wasn't planning on doing any driving for a couple of hours anyway. 

He cupped the glass in his hands and studied the bar's clientele. This early in the afternoon, there wasn't anyone but a couple of hard-nosed drunks slumped in the corner by the far wall, a cute little waitress in a flouncy apron taking orders from a couple in loud matching flowery shirts and sandals. Reno pursed his lips and whistled softly to pass the time, a little ditty he'd learned from a rundown bar somewhere in Edge a few years ago.

_So far away from my home, sweet home  
Day by day, from land to land I roam  
Though told by the wind which way to go,  
Oh, how I long for my home, sweet home. _

The door to the bar slammed open.

At first, Reno didn't recognize Rude with his face half-covered in blood and one arm hanging limply at his side. He leapt from his chair, knocking his drink over and sending it crashing to the floor in a shower of glass. "Hey man," he said, easing his friend back against the bar, ripping part of his sleeve from his already tattered shirt, mopping up the blood as best as he could. Most of it was dried, caked so thickly around Rude's mouth he could barely speak. "Call an ambulance!" Reno yelled at the bartender, who was already backing away to the bar's only phone behind the counter. Rude moaned, raising one hand to his face, and then swollen eyes opened slightly.

"Re...no?" he whispered.

"I'm here, dude, you're gonna be ok," Reno said. "I got people coming. What the hell happened to you?"

"Nibel..." Rude said, and then stopped, gasping for breath. The door banged open and a few men rushed down the stairs with a stretcher.

_Nibelheim_, thought Reno with a sudden frightened anger. Rufus was right. The men eased Rude onto the stretcher and Rude grasped Reno's hand with a grip so crushingly strong that Reno barely refrained from crying out. There was something else in that grip, something cold and metallic and pointed, and as the men rushed back up the stairs with their burden, Reno opened his hand slowly and stared at the object there.

The topmost point of the star pendant had pierced the skin of one finger and blood oozed out of the surface cut. But that wasn't what Reno noticed - it was the little surface pockmarks on the face of the star pendant, the marks which indicated that it had seen years of wear and tear. He turned it over, saw the markings scratched on the back of the metal.

_AVALANCHE_

"Well damn," he said.

--

They told him Rude was ready for visitors a few hours later, that he'd needed surgery to repair a broken arm and some painkillers for the swelling, but there had been no serious injuries and they'd checked him out of Costa del Sol's tiny hospital and moved him to Reno's hotel room. That was fine, Reno thought. Rude had a lot of explaining to do.

"If you didn't look like shit, I'd punch you in the face," he told his partner pointedly, staring down at the bandaged-swathed form lying prostrate on the bed. 

"Hello," Rude said around the bandages. "I see I've been missed."

"You've got some serious explaining to do," Reno said. "I'd wait until you had something to eat and maybe a nap, but with the shape you're in, I doubt we can afford to wait. What happened?"

Rude coughed. "Help me sit up," he said. Reno frowned at him. "I'm ok," the big man assured him. "A broken arm and a black eye is not going to hurt me if I sit for a bit."

"You can start by explaining this," Reno said, pushing Rude against the bed pillows and dangling the star pendant in front of him at eye level. "I've read the back of it. I know what it says. Cloud always carried this with him when he was going anywhere."

Rude closed his eyes briefly. "Yes," he said. "He did. Sit down, Reno."

"Can't. My legs are itchy," Reno said, but he sat impatiently. "Spill."

"Rufus had one of those dreams that he couldn't ignore. I know Strife used to get them too. I don't know if it was the spirit of that Ancient girl again, or aftereffects of Mako. He came to me the next day and said I had to go to Nibelheim, and I was not to tell Tifa."

"The dream?" Reno prodded, but Rude shook his head.

"He didn't say. From the fact that he told me I shouldn't tell Tifa, I assumed it had to do with Strife's whereabouts - dead or alive. I stopped by Midgar to give Tifa the ring before I headed out. I figured that it was now or never. I didn't want to be sucked into Nibelheim by whatever had gotten Cloud and not had the chance to tell her. I left early the next day. I told her I was going to Wutai. It took me two days to get to Nibelheim."

"Right," Reno said, the uneasy feeling creeping over him again. "So?"

Rude took a deep breath. "Nibelheim's no longer there."

Reno blinked. "Say again?"

"You heard me," Rude said harshly, staring out the window. "The town's vanished."

"You're not saying it was burned down again."

Rude shook his head jerkily. "Burning, like Sephiroth did, leaves evidence. This time it was like there was nothing there in the first place. There's no ruins, no evidence of civilization, nothing. There's a bunch of jagged rocks and boulders that hadn't been there before, like there was an earthquake."

"You're sure you went to the right place," Reno said, clutching the pendant.

Rude smiled sardonically through swollen lips. "My navigation skills haven't deteriorated that much in the last few years," he said. "I even checked the electronic maps, just in case. Nibelheim's gone."

"Well," Reno said, for once at a loss for words. "Shit."

"I walked around the place once or twice just in case. I found a cave. It must have been where the old Shinra mansion used to be. I went in so I could have something to report. It serves me right for not listening to my instincts."

"I'm guessing you found this inside," Reno said, gesturing to the pendant.

"Just inside the entrance," Rude said. "I turned on my light and kept going in. The place was like a maze. I was about to head back out when I heard a noise. Like a fool, I went to investigate."

He stopped. Reno clutched the pendant again. "Rude?"

"There's something living down in that cave," Rude said. "I don't know what it is. I don't think I want to know."

"Is it...human?"

Rude's eyes were haunted. "I don't know. I couldn't see it clearly except for the eyes. The eyes..." He trailed off.

Reno bent over the bed, voice hard. "Rude, man, you gotta pull yourself together. We're all in this with you, and if there's some new monster living inside of there that's swallowed Nibelheim whole, I think it's as much of a threat as we've seen in some time."

"It...spoke to me," Rude said. "The voice...it was Cloud's voice."

--

Rude fell asleep somewhere in the late afternoon and Reno let him sleep, wandering the halls of the motel with Cloud's pendant in his pocket. A monster out of the dark, with Cloud's voice and Cloud's eyes. The shadow of it had been too big to be truly human, Rude had said. The thought of the remembered conversation sent chills down Reno's spine, but it wasn't something he could just afford to push away.

He should call headquarters and inform Rufus and Tseng of the circumstances, but he wasn't about to take his chances on a regular phone. He was on vacation, after all, and Rufus hadn't given him anything with proper encryption. He'd use Rude's, but that had been lost in the struggle and flight out of Nibelheim. If the thing - whatever it was - in Nibelheim was part of a larger network, they'd be tracking him and Rude in no time, and maybe even go after Rufus again.

He had to warn Elena, Reno thought, ticking things off his fingers. Inform Rufus. Somehow figure out how much Tifa had managed to piece together after Reno's little hint the other day over the phone. In hindsight, that had been stupid too, even on an encrypted phone on his end, but he had a fondness for Tifa, Rude or no Rude. And then he had to get back to Corel in one piece, which was easier said than done with an injured man riding on the back of his bike. Rude had apparently ridden his own crippled bike into Costa del Sol, but he was in no condition to ride it home, and the bike was in for extensive repairs.

Shoving the pendant into his pocket, Reno decided that pacing wasn't doing anything for his sanity and left the motel down the rickety staircase through the wooden-slatted front door. The sun was setting in a fiery haze of gold and red over the beach. The best thing to do, he decided, was to take a leisurely stroll, like any man on mandatory vacation would do, and maybe get something to eat. Last he remembered, they sold good hot dogs down on the beach at one of those umbrella stands. Maybe Rude would want one.

He'd made it down the sandy slope to the beach front, stripped off his left shoe and was feeling the fine white sand under his toes, when he noticed that one of the long shadows had detached itself from one of the palm trees at the edge of the waterfront and was following him. He whirled around, but there was nothing there, just the sound of waves on the shore and the breeze curling around his face. He started walking again, and there was that motion at the corner of his eye, to his left, the slightest hint of footsteps. Stopping again, he stared resolutely ahead at the empty beach, a few people lounging on white plastic chairs, the faint sound of music coming from the large new cafe up above, on the boardwalk.

Reno smiled tightly to himself, bent down to strip off the rest of his shoes and socks, and began to run.

The sand was soft and giving beneath his feet and he pounded down the stretch of beach, feeling his feet sink into the ground and giving his calves and hamstrings a good workout. He must have looked ridiculous to anyone actually enjoying the sunset view from the beach, some barefoot guy in a nice suit, his slacks rolled up around his ankles, shoes and socks in hand, huffing and puffing his way through the surf. Reno had never quite cared what bystanders thought of him, and he found he didn't quite care now, only focusing on the shadow to his left, still moving with him.

They passed out of sight of the cafe and the commercial section of beach to where the sand turned to sharp, gravelly stones that pricked the soles of his feet and made running difficult. He slowed to a walk, stopped, turned again. The shadow was gone, but he put one hand to his belt, where the Shinra pistol lay holstered.

"You can come out now," he said.

A flicker of movement and then the man emerged out of the shadows, blood-red eyes gleaming in the dusk light under a hooded cloak. He'd traded his usual black and red garb for a long, grey flowing garment over dark pants tucked into scuffed boots, but Reno would know that face anywhere.

"It's not smart to discuss secrets in public," Vincent Valentine said.

"Well, well," Reno said smoothly, not taking his hand off the gun. "If it isn't the monster himself."

Vincent took the slight impassively. "Unfortunately, I'm not the monster you should be afraid of at the moment." Red eyes flicked to the right and left quickly, then returned to Reno's face, as if satisfied that the "public" he had just referred to was not listening in.

"I can take care of myself, thanks very much," Reno snapped, the anger bubbling up from beneath years of Shinra's training. Tseng used to tell him that his temper was going to be the death of him one day, but damned if he was going to stand here and take orders from some ex-Turk who flitted in and out of their lives whenever he liked it. "If you know so damn much, why didn't you try and warn Rude while you were at it?"

"That," Vincent said, "I didn't know. Believe me, I would have tried and stopped your friend if I had the information beforehand, but it was only thanks to the attack on Rude that I know what I know now."

"And what's that?" Reno said irritably, gripping the handle of the pistol tightly. The materia in its slots were smooth and cold under his sweaty fingers. "Damn it, Valentine, I've had a lifetime of being strung along on information. You think I can't spot when you're trying to dodge the question?"

Vincent's lips quirked in what would have been called a grin, had that movement been on anyone else. "A Turk to the core," he said, "just like Tseng said." He turned fluidly, pointing one finger down the beach farther on, where the gravel turned into pebbly ground sloping away from the water's edge and turning into a series of low, jagged cliffs. "Come with me."

"Wait a second," Reno called after him sharply, "What was that about Tseng?" But Vincent had already slipped away like the shadows that he seemed to so adore, moving swiftly and silently along the rocks. Feeling clumsy and waterlogged in comparison, Reno bent down to put his socks and shoes back on and began trudging after him. The rocky coast was rougher going than the beach, and Reno couldn't help but think that for a man who was supposed to be on vacation, he was sure having one of the most interesting weeks he'd had in years. _I bet Rufus'll love to hear about this._

He then imagined the former Shinra leader's face after he and Rude, all bandaged and sewn up, arrived back in Corel on the back of his motorbike. _Or maybe not._

Vincent was already waiting for him at the cliffs, perched like a bird of prey on one of the lower boulders as Reno clambered up unsteady footholds, his shirt soaked with sweat under his suit coat. "No fair," he grumbled under his breath. "I'm only human."

The former Turk simply watched him silently until Reno had firmly situated himself on the rock and shrugged out of his coat, panting slightly. "What do you know about the Lifestream?" Vincent said.

Reno blinked at the sudden broaching of the new topic. "Uh," he said. "Enough. It's not something I like to think about on a daily basis. I figure I'll have plenty of time to do that when I die and my body splits into tiny atoms or whatever. Why?"

The red eyes frowned slightly at him, in disapproval at his irreverence or just annoyance at Reno's blowing off of another pseudo-quasi religious topic, he didn't know. He didn't think it mattered. "Fifteen years ago, Jenova and Sephiroth were defeated by Cloud Strife and the rest of our small alliance. Thirteen years ago, the cells of Jenova's remains that had entered the Lifestream caused the Geostigma syndrome, cured mostly by Aeris Gainsborough's intervention from that same Lifestream."

Reno didn't miss the qualifier. "Mostly?" he said sharply. "I thought Geostigma was gone for good. I haven't heard of any cases popping up in the last ten years or so."

Vincent nodded. "That's true."

He waited for the black-haired man to continue, but after nothing seemed forthcoming, he crossed his arms over his chest, rolling his eyes. "Look, man, you stalk me down the beach, make me do some mountain climbing, and then leave me hanging again. That's no fair."

If he had been Rufus, Vincent would have smiled at Reno's mock-tirade. If he had been Rude, he would have made some pacifying remarks. If he had been Tseng, he would have given Reno third shift patrol for speaking out of turn. But Vincent was not any of them, and simply sat, staring up at the sky, shoulders set and expression cold.

Reno opened his mouth to say that he'd had enough of this shit and he was going home, and then Vincent abruptly turned away, yanking his sleeve up at the same time to show Reno a forearm speckled with tiny red pustules, blue veins running startlingly bright against blackened flesh. Reno stared, horrified and yet fascinated, goosebumps prickling over his skin.

"Mostly," Vincent said. "I believe this is a new type of the virus, a mutant strain, perhaps?" He sounded as calm as someone discussing his schedule for the next day. "I have been to Aeris' church in Edge. The water in her pool reduced some of the swelling, and the blisters, but the disease remains."

"Shit," Reno said softly.

"I believe also there have been a number of infant deaths this past year due to a disease of this particular nature, especially in towns nearer to the Northern Crater. Rufus Shinra has the statistics in one of his log books. The disease seems to be confined to a small area for the moment. I believe it is not contagious."

_Or you wouldn't be here right now_, Reno thought. He jerked his gaze away from Vincent's arm, and the man calmly pulled his sleeve down again. "This is why he sent Rude to Nibelheim? What the hell does...why...did Cloud..." He wasn't sure what he wanted to say, brain rolling with too many thoughts and emotions to name, so he simply stopped.

"I believe Rufus Shinra owes you all an explanation," Vincent said.

"Damn right," Reno muttered, massaging his temples with both fingers, staring off into the distance where the sky met the sea in a last red flare of bravado as the sun vanished over the horizon. "More than me, he owes Rude. We're not Shinra any more. I ain't gonna have it, and I sure as hell ain't gonna let Rude have it either."

"Your friend is too stubborn for his own good," Vincent said. "Tseng mentioned this as well."

Reno frowned. "That's the second time you've mentioned Tseng. What's up with that?"

Vincent was silent for a moment, and then he said, "Tseng was worried."

He had no response to that, so he simply shifted on the rock. The wind was cold. Tseng worried a lot these days - worried about Rufus, worried about Green Earth, worried, about his old Turks, worried about budget and finances and the new oil industry, worried like an old man that it was only a matter of time before a new Kadaj or Sephiroth would appear and all his work would be for nothing. "Tseng's like a packrat," Reno said irritably. "Or a mom with empty nest syndrome."

Vincent chuckled softly and Reno swung his head around at the unexpected sound. "Tseng is a good man," he said. "He sent me after you because he cares about what happens to his friends."

"So he sent you, did he?" The anger flared again, then subsided. He would have preferred Elena to Valentine, but what was done was done. Rude would probably be awake by now, and there was some explaining to do. "I suppose you're coming back to Corel with me then."

"As soon as Rude is willing to leave," Vincent said. He stood suddenly, the barest hint of movement through the glow of the rising moon. "I will meet you back at the motel."

"Rude's motorcycle is broken," Reno said. He did not hear footsteps, but something told him that the other man was already withdrawing, gliding back down to the pebbly beach like fluid shadow.

"I thought that three would be a tight fit on your motorcycle," Vincent said from below, so softly that Reno could barely hear him, "so Reeve and Cid lent me an airship."


	5. Chapter 4: Vincent

_IV. Vincent_

The airship provided to them by Highwind Corporation was named the Bronco. According to Cid, it was the fourth generation Highwind, fitted with all new engines and a digital display glass cockpit system. The Bronco was also installed with machine gun turrets. All of this was wasted on Vincent Valentine, who didn't care what the airship did, as long as it worked.

He'd parked it in the backyard of Costa del Sol with the permission of the town mayor. The poor man was obviously frightened out of his wits as Vincent had landed, and he had stood there for fifteen minutes explaining that no, Sephiroth had not returned from the dead, that Green Earth was not going to take over the city, and all he wanted was a hot bath, a meal, and the whereabouts of two former Turks before he went on his way. As he had expected, there was only one place in town Reno would head to on a vacation.

He had been standing in the shadows of the bar, watching the red-headed man whistle as he plugged away at one drink after another, when the commotion had happened. It could have been worse. The bar was not crowded, and Vincent did not want to imagine what would have happened if Rude had burst in at night, on a full house of revellers and a drunken Reno.

Tseng had warned that Reno would be difficult to reason with, perhaps more difficult than Vincent would expect. He'd gotten the call from the former Turk leader on his way from Edge to Fort Condor, on the road again, restless for reasons he didn't quite know. The Geostigma symptoms which had appeared almost six months ago had spread again, now stretching up his entire forearm and reaching black fingers up across his elbow. He'd gone to Edge again, to Aeris' church, to the pool where she had once healed Cloud Strife and then an entire city. The water had soothed his skin, dissolved the red pustules around the edge of the sickness, had healed the minor scrapes and scratches he had gotten while tangling with a small dragon on the outskirts of Wutai two weeks ago. But the black flesh remained.

He would ask Cloud about it, but Cloud was gone.

When he'd arrived in Corel, he had gone straight to the Green Earth headquarters complex, walking directly across the center of town in broad daylight, too tired and in pain to stay in the shadows. Corel itself was beautiful now, entirely rebuilt, a peaceful town of pink granite building fronts and paved roads. The Shinra building in Midgar had been sleek glass and metal, a forbidding structure of towers and ramparts, but Green Earth's white gates opened onto a smaller, compact set of facilities with carefully manicured lawns and gravel walkways between buildings. Tseng met him at the front door of the main building, holding out one hand to greet him. Vincent had looked at the hand, looked at Tseng, and said, "I'll pass, thank you."

Tseng dropped his hand and said, "So Rufus was right about your arm."

Rufus Shinra was having the odd dreams again, said Tseng, and he had known something was wrong with Vincent, had asked Tseng to confirm. Vincent felt very old and very silly at having come all the way to Corel so a bunch of pseudo-environmentalists could pronounce him sick, and told Tseng as much. "It's not quite how it sounds," the other man said. "I told Rufus I'd handle it. He's away, and doesn't know you're here."

Tseng looked older than he remembered. His long ponytail was streaked with silver. There were crows' feet at the corner of those dark, slanted eyes and he moved slowly with the plodding of a man retired from a life of activity. "You've gained weight," Vincent said. Tseng laughed tiredly.

"I prefer to call it 'filling out'," he said. "I don't get out much these days. I work all day, then go home to eat and sleep, then get up the next morning to do it all over again." He put a hand to his stomach, rubbing it absently. Vincent recognized the spot as where Sephiroth had stabbed him long ago, at the Temple of the Ancients. "I would say you look the same as ever, Valentine, but that would be less of a compliment for you."

"I don't mind," Vincent replied affably. He glanced around at the coral-painted walls of the corridor as they climbed the staircase to the second floor. Watercolor paintings of different landscapes and cities hung at regular intervals, and he recognized some of them: the forests outside Gongaga, the World Bank building and surrounding park area downtown in New Midgar, Cosmo Canyon's cliffs, the moon rising over Junon Harbor. The carpet muffled their footsteps as Tseng stopped at the fourth door and motioned Vincent inside.

"My office," he said, closing the door behind him and gesturing around the small room with its bare walls. "Make yourself comfortable. I regret that I am not the most hospitable man you'll meet."

Vincent smiled slightly. "None of you are. But I make do. Please get to the point."

Tseng seated himself behind the desk and its blinking computer and reached behind him to turn on the radio. Soft music filled the room and he folded his hands in front of him. "Show me your arm," he said.

Vincent laid his right arm on the table, pulling back the sleeve. Tseng studied for it a second, and then turned away with a slight shudder. "That will do, thank you."

"Disgusting, isn't it?" Vincent said, pulling his sleeve down again. "It doesn't hurt, not the definition of pain any of you are familiar with. It's more like a slow burning itch, tender when it's touched."

"Do you remember Kadaj?" asked Tseng abruptly. Vincent nodded. Tseng said, "I wonder whatever happened to him?"

"He died," Vincent said. "As far as we know." He did not sound as certain as he wanted to, but Tseng shook his head.

"Oh, I believe Kadaj died," Tseng said, "just like Sephiroth died, just like Aeris died." There was a slight hiccup in his voice as he said her name, but only because Vincent had been listening for it. "Just like Jenova died."

"Was Jenova ever truly alive in the first place?" Vincent countered. "I don't think we can afford to put so many definitive quantifiers on things we still don't understand. Gast's and Hojo's research was only the beginning, and Meteor only one end."

"Sephiroth died," Tseng said, "Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that death is a barrier that stops him for long. There is so much we don't know about the Lifestream yet."

Vincent looked at him sharply. "Geostigma was born from Jenova's destructive cells in the Lifestream," he said. "Aeris Gainsborough countered it, life with death. But this new disease..." he trailed off, staring at his arm beneath the black cloth that covered it.

"Could it be that Aeris' powers from the Lifestream are weakening? She's been dead thirteen years, only a girl when she was killed."

Vincent stared at him levelly. "Isn't that your job to find out?"

"Was our job," Tseng corrected him, staring out the small window at the bustling center of Corel. "The biological development and research branch of Shinra is no more. As you well know."

He had no answer to that, so he simply stared again at his arm as the tinny music wafted from the radio's speakers, thinking of Aeris and the brief time they had known each other. She had not been like Tifa, determinedly optimistic, nor eternally brash and outgoing like Yuffie Kisaragi. There had been something quietly desperate in Aeris, as if she had known that her time would one day run out before she had done all the things she wanted to do, as time had run out for her mother, for the rest of her race.

Aeris Gainsborough was what the world needed right now, and she was dead.

"I have a favor to ask," Tseng said finally, and Vincent raised his head, looked the ex-Turk leader in the eye.

"Ask it."

Tseng breathed in deeply and let it out, looking out the window again. "Rude is in Nibelheim," he said. "Rufus had a dream about Cloud Strife and he sent Rude to investigate. Reno is headed to Costa del Sol to intercept him. There is a...possibility that one or both of them might be injured and unable to make it back." He squeezed his hands together. "I would like you to go to Costa del Sol. I will, of course, reimburse you for your trouble."

"And how will you do that?" Vincent asked softly. "Rufus doesn't know I'm here, remember?" The cheerful music from the radio segued to a ballad, the piano melding softly with the singer's melancholy voice.

_My last night here for you  
Same old songs, just once more  
My last night here with you?  
Maybe yes, maybe no_

Tseng smiled slightly. "I've amassed a fair sum in my bank account over the years. You don't trust me?"

Vincent looked down at his arm, back at the tired, worried man in the chair, over Tseng's head at the landscape outside the window. He was not used to Corel being so very green. "Of course I don't trust you," Vincent said. "You forget that I was once one of you."

"The Turks of Shinra are gone, Valentine. Elena's head of security now, not me. Reno and Rude are still around because Rufus does not have the heart to order them to go. I'm now the past figurehead of something that no longer exists."

Vincent flexed the fingers of his metal left hand. "You're admitting that this time, none of you can help yourselves. Am I hearing you correctly?"

"They're good men. Go save them, Valentine. I don't deserve your help, but...they do."

Vincent rose from his chair. "I'll go," he said. "But not because you'll pay me. I won't take one gil of your money. Call this paying back old debts."

Tseng stared at him. "That might not be a wise choice."

"Even a wanderer gets tired of being alone sometimes," Vincent said. "I will set out as soon as I'm able to secure transportation. I trust Highwind Corporation will assist me?"

"Building number four, the warehouse to the right of this one using the covered walkway," Tseng said. "Thank you, Vincent. I won't forget this."

--

He made it back to the motel before Reno, going noiselessly up the stairs to the sound of the sea from the open windows in the stairwell. Reno had left the door unlocked. Vincent went inside and found Rude sitting up in bed.

"It's you," Rude said, sounding unsurprised. "I was wondering when you would get here."

"Were you expecting me?"

"More or less," the other man said, settling back against the pillows with a slight wince. He had rarely seen Rude without his sunglasses, and he looked younger, more vulnerable. "Tseng tends to pull you out of his deck of cards when things get rough."

"Things are going to get a lot rougher," Vincent said darkly. He went to the open window and shut it, pulling the curtains closed. "How good of a shape are you in?"

Rude touched his face experimentally, patted his injured arm and jerked his shoulders up and down a few times, wincing again but under control. "I'm fine," he said. "Are we going back to Corel?"

"So says the shadowman," Reno interjected, banging the door against the wall as he entered the room. "What's up, Valentine, you developed lock-picking skills or something?"

"The door was open when I arrived," Vincent said. "Again I should remind you about the follies of carelessness." He went to the door, closed it and bolted it firmly.

Reno glared at him and disappeared into the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him. "Go and stick it up someone else's ass, Valentine!" came his muffled voice. Vincent looked at Rude.

"Has he been spending time with Highwind Corporation?"

Rude smiled slightly between the bandages and began to get out of bed. Vincent reached out a hand to help him, balancing the big man as he tottered unsteadily to his feet. "I assume Highwind lent you some sort of air transportation to get us out of here?"

"It's just outside the city," Vincent said quietly. He glanced again at the window, at the moon's waxing crescent above Costa del Sol's palm trees. "We need to leave soon."

Rude wrapped a holster around his waist, slid the gun lying on the bedside table carefully into it. "Once Reno comes out of the bathroom," he said. One hand went to the side of his face, where the white bandages were now stained a dusky red. "I should change these."

"You should," Vincent said. His arm was tingling again, stabs of not-quite pain shooting up and down the infected area. "When did you start carrying a gun again?"

"Since Tseng told him to," Reno's voice called from the bathroom as the door opened again. "Are we ready to go?"

Rude gestured to him. "Just waiting on you."

"Your bandages," Vincent reminded him, and Rude shook his head.

"I can wait till we get to the ship to change these."

"Suit yourself," Vincent said. He watched Reno sling his duffel over his shoulder and nod at Rude. "Follow me."

The stars were out now as he led his motley crew out of the back door of the motel, down the moonlit side street out of sight of the surfside partiers that had begun to emerge with loud drunken voices and the sound of beer bottles opening. Vincent led them to where the alley met the main road, motioned to them to wait. From behind him, as he slipped into the shadows of the town center, he heard Reno whisper accusingly, "I'm supposed to be on vacation."

"I'm sorry," Rude said, and then Vincent was out of hearing range, the wind rushing past him in great gulps and flickers of golden air. Stars shimmered in his vision and he gazed out into the land, closing his eyes and letting the flow of the world pass him by slowly as the Planet turned and the Lifestream sang in his ears along with the gibbering of demons at the edges of his hearing, Chaos' echoes from inside his soul where the monster still dwelt, submerged.

He could not see the Lifestream like the Ancients had seen it. If he could, perhaps he would not have this mysterious illness eating away at a body still ageless.

The coast and surrounding areas of Costa del Sol were quiet and clear. He slipped back into the street and joined the two Turks. Rude was leaning against the alley wall, face clenched in pain though trying not to show it, and Reno's expression was tense. Vincent took in the situation at a glance, jerked his head mutely, and Rude pushed himself off the wall with a grimace.

"Rude-" Reno hissed, but the tall man shook his head.

"I'm fine," he said. "Lead on, Vincent."

The Bronco was where he had left it in the grassy field on the far side of Corel, still tethered, darkly silver in the moonlight. He and Reno helped Rude on board and settled him in one of the crew chairs on the upper deck, and Reno unshouldered his pack, spilling its contents on the floor. Vincent left him rummaging through packages of bandages and went to check on the engines.

_It's a government conspiracy_, Cid had said darkly when Vincent had gone into building four of the Green Earth compound and found the former astronaut slouching by the receptionist's desk, jotting down a phone number. He seemed genuinely happy to see Vincent, said that Reeve was out of town, in Edge for the week, about a government contract to restart the Shinra space program.

Vincent had wondered privately that Cid did not seem as happy about that news as he'd expected him to be, but said nothing. The man had grown increasingly touchy and restless since his divorce. Instead, he relayed in brief the news that Tseng had given him and asked to borrow some form of transportation. Anything but another Tiny Bronco, he said, would be adequate. That was when the government conspiracy theory had come up again, because in Cid's opinion, the new government in New Midgar was just another excuse to find some way to take over the world, as Shinra had.

"I highly doubt that at the moment," Vincent said. "Midgar seems to be keeping to themselves for the moment."

"They've been posting flyers in Corel," Cid muttered. "Lookin' for recruits for their new military police force."

He recalled seeing some of those flyers tacked up on bulletin boards around Edge, remembered that there had been a large poster in the foyer of the main Green Earth headquarters building, but he hadn't taken any notice. "I'd be more worried about the state of affairs in Nibelheim at the moment," he said. "Something's not right."

"I hear ya," Cid said. "Goddamn fucking Sephiroth."

Vincent pressed one hand to the tiny window of the engine room, wondering if the Cetra had felt the Planet rushing past them too, like clods of dirt and soil and years of history torn up by a blast of Earth. Will we be fighting Sephiroth forever? he wondered. Perhaps he should feel that kinship with Sephiroth as men who both carried part of Hojo's shared legacy, but he shied away from that. He was many things, but he was not the monster that Sephiroth had been, no matter how many times he would succumb in battle to the darkness of the creatures living inside him.

Cloud had defeated Sephiroth many times, but the nightmare kept returning.

"Vincent?"

It was Rude, fresh bandages wrapped around his head, leaning on the doorframe. "We should go."

He turned from the porthole. "I hope you have a full report ready for Rufus Shinra," he said quietly to Rude as he passed him on the way back to the cockpit. "Things are going to get a lot worse from now on."


	6. Chapter 5: Cid

_V. Cid_

"You're back," Cid Highwind said flatly as Rufus Shinra emerged from the door behind Highwind Corporation's stacks of scrap sheet metal. The back warehouse of Green Earth building number 4 was humid and dark, and Cid got creakily to his feet from the floor, where he was working on a damaged engine fanblade. Rufus surveyed the clutter of machine parts and tools, smoothing back mussed blond hair with one hand. He was dressed in a simple dark suit, though Cid wasn't fooled - the black and white ensemble had most likely cost several thousand gil. The cane gripped casually in one hand was all chrome and silver, beautiful even in its understatement of what had happened fifteen years ago.

He couldn't quite snap at the man for sneaking up on him, because the tapping of the cane and the heavy footsteps, limping and shuffling and slow, would always give Rufus away, so he stood, chewing his lip, waiting for the other to say something.

Rufus did. "You don't sound happy to see me."

"And why should I be?" Cid grunted, reaching for a piece of flat metal and then leaning out of his chair to grab a fallen wire cutter from the concrete. He felt dirty and sweaty next to the elegant man. "It's a business deal, remember? I manage your airship fleet, you pay me and leave me alone. You shoulda given me a call before you came over, anyways. I would have turned on the air conditioning for you."

"I've told you before, that's not necessary." Rufus sounded so smooth that Cid almost rolled his eyes again. Instead, he bent over the fan blade, making a show of checking damaged edges that he'd already checked, hoping the former Shinra president would go away. The man had ostensibly changed for the better, but he was still as annoyingly ever-present as always. "I like seeing my colleagues in their natural environment."

That made it sound like Cid was some sort of endangered species. "Colleague my ass. Don't you have anything better to do?"

"I'm somewhat of a dabbler in mechanical repair," Rufus said easily. "I'd like to watch, if you don't mind."

Cid almost barked back that yes, he did mind, and would the other guy just get the hell out, but a thought occurred to him. "Okay, big guy," he said, a grin rising to his lips, "if you're so intent on staying here, you're helping me out. That's not negotiable. You're in this shed, you're workin'. Otherwise, get out the damn door."

Five minutes later found Rufus in some of Cid's old oilstained clothes, protective gear and goggles on, soldering iron in hand. Cid hadn't expected him to agree, but he wasn't about to pass up extra help, and the first thing he'd learned about Rufus Shinra when he'd moved to Corel was that the former Shinra leader would accept no pity, no special coddling, no different treatment because his handicap. The piles of scrap metal and broken down junk inside of the toolshed were growing taller and more ominous by the day, and this was only the small stuff - broken lock boxes, chipped gears, scratched panels. The really big stuff went to the factory down south, but Cid had always been somewhat of a scrimper and saver, and he didn't see the sense in shipping off stuff that could be repaired on station.

Shera had helped him with this in the beginning, but now that would have meant them sharing close quarters. After the divorce, they'd agreed it was best to spend some time apart to avoid any confrontations. So she was across the world at the New Midgar headquarters running things, and with Reeve gone to Midgar this week as well, it was just him and a couple of part-timers.

"Maybe it's time you hired an full time assistant or two," Rufus said.

"Can't," Cid grunted, twisting a bolt into place. "Low on funds."

"If you would just accept some of the money that we-"

"I ain't no charity case," Cid said. "You like my ships, that's fine and dandy. You've already given me workspace and contracts and shit up the wazoo. Green Earth's our biggest customer, you know, but I ain't gonna accept none of your people. There's not going to be another Shinra starting in my company." He put down the wrench and looked Rufus in the eye, noting for the first time that the blond man looked haggard, ill-rested. "What's the matter, didn't sleep on the trip back from Junon?"

"No, the sleeping quarters were fine," Rufus said calmly. He pulled the goggles over his eyes. "I've been having odd dreams lately, that's all. Where do I solder?"

"I need a cigarette," Cid muttered, but helped the man into the chair by the side table and pointed irritably to three places on a pile of circuit boards. "Just a few passes there and I got the rest."

"You asked for my help," Rufus pointed out. "I'd like to be taken seriously for once."

"Whaddya mean, 'for once'?" Cid said indignantly as the sparks flew from the soldering iron. "I take you a lot more seriously than I ought, most of the time. You know, I still haven't forgotten that time you ordered us all executed because of Weapon."

Rufus paused in his soldering work. It was odd to see the man in old clothes working just like the rest of them. But then again, Rufus Shinra was supposed to be just like the rest of them now. "That wasn't one of my grand, defining moments," he said, and did a few more cuts around the hot metal. "Just an example for you that taking bad advice is worse than taking no advice at all, most of the time." He sat back, inspecting his work, then pushed the goggles up onto his forehead with a satisfied motion.

"Yeah, so you say now," Cid said. "The way Barret described it, you looked more than happy to be getting rid of us."

"As I said, that was a long time ago. Can't you forgive me for who I was fifteen years ago?"

"I'm here in Corel, ain't I?" Cid retorted, taking the drillbit to the metal with more vigor than was needed. "Though I admit, when Reeve told me you were offering us a home up here, I said something along the lines of fuck no."

Rufus laughed easily, reaching for his cane. Cid put down the drillbit, but Rufus waved him away, pushing himself to a standing position with an elegant, practiced motion that once again made Cid feel rather inadequate. He supposed that was the way things were - it was all about the breeding. Rufus was a politician and always would be, and Cid was a commoner and always would be, no matter how high he could have risen in the Shinra ranks. He wondered briefly about Sephiroth and the dangerous grace the man had always moved with, ghost or no ghost.

"I was a bit surprised when Reeve told me he'd teamed up with you," Rufus said. "You two never struck me as the types to get along well."

Cid grunted. "The damn cat was too cute for me to just say flat-out no." That was the truth, or as near to it as he would admit. He hadn't trusted Cait Sith in the beginning, but when the robotic cat, and thus Reeve, had stolen the Highwind back for him, it was as if years of dead ends and grief and anger had been stripped away. He had been flying - really flying - and more than that, he was flying through the skies he loved with people he had been coming to respect.

"Reeve does have a way about him," Rufus agreed. "Hiring him was one of the smarter things my dear late father did."

Cid snorted. "Whatever. You hated your old man's guts, and we all know it."

Rufus leaned back against the back steel wall of the warehouse and closed his eyes. The man looked cool and composed, while Cid wiped drops of sweat from his forehead. "Shinra was my father's dream," he said. "Not mine." He opened those bright blue eyes that Cid always found so unnerving. "I suppose you could say that my father liked things, grand ideals. I prefer the human element, to find out what makes people do what they do, to take the human psyche apart and put it back together, if you will."

Cid slouched back into the crooked chair in the corner, fishing for the right-size bolt in the massive toolbox displayed against the wall. "I don't like talking about dreams. That shit's a waste of time. As for people, your father's guys in Shinra did a number on taking them apart and putting them back together, and we're nowhere nearer an answer for that than when they started, are we?" He shot a glare at Rufus, who was staring thoughtfully across the warehouse and wondered if the other man was even listening. "All we got was Sephiroth and a bunch of clones, and Geostigma."

"And Vincent Valentine." "And Vincent Valentine," Cid acknowledged gruffly. The man had come whispering in through the door yesterday wanting to borrow an airship, and had almost given him a heart attack with his silent entrance. "We don't need any more of his issues either."

"And Cloud Strife."

Cid was on his feet in an instant, slamming one fist into the wall next to Rufus' face, not caring how much it hurt. "I don't want to talk about Cloud," he hissed. "You hear me?"

Rufus' eyes focused on him and he was startled to find that Rufus did not look smug, or even calm and condescending as he always did. Rather, the bright eyes were intense, pained, almost...worried? Cid removed his fist, backing away a little bit, looking at the floor. "Sorry," he muttered. "Just...don't."

A slight whisper of clothing and a scuff of boots, the tap of a cane as Rufus moved away from the wall, and then he said, "I'm sorry. It was a bad subject to bring up at a time like this."

"Yeah," Cid said harshly, going back to his engine fanblade. "It was."

"I wish Rude and Lockhart all the best," Rufus said. "You probably don't believe me, but it's true. You don't think much of me, I know."

Reno had told Cid the news. He wasn't sure how one of Rufus' cronies had heard about his friends before he had, but he admitted he was rather out of the loop these days, stuck in Corel with a bunch of ex-Turks, soldering aircraft parts. It was like he was back in the academy. Shera had used to give him regular updates on what was happening with the old AVALANCHE group around the world, but after they'd started arguing regularly he'd snapped at her to quit yapping on the phone so much, and the updates had stopped. "Maybe we can get them a pair of matching chocobos for that delivery service of hers."

"I expect she'll be quitting that now," Rufus said quietly. He leaned against the table. "If she does come to Corel, I have a few job vacancies that she might like to fill, in any case."

"Yeah," Cid growled, feeling annoyed again. "Go ahead and tell us all what we should be doing with our lives." He put down the drill, stalked over to the cabinet and got himself a cigarette. "Get lost, Shinra. I'm taking a smoke break."

There was the tiniest glint of amusement in those blue eyes as the other man limped to the door and disappeared. It was a wonder that Rufus put up with his bad temper, though both of them knew that it was more for show than for any real animosity. Almost ten years of mutual acquaintance, and he'd learned to tolerate the former Shinra president, though Cid didn't think he'd ever trust him. There was too much history there, too much bitterness and debts not paid for him to truly let go. Reeve apparently didn't feel the same. Perhaps that was because Reeve had willingly betrayed and left Shinra, while Cid had been forced out, kicked to the curb by an organization that felt he'd outlived his usefulness.

He slipped out through the back door of the shed, leaning against the sturdy wall and putting the cigarette to his lips. There were two of his airships in the sky, one low on the horizon, the other barely visible against the clouds. When he'd started the airship business with Reeve, he had been planning for a small venture, where he would provide the technical expertise and Reeve would provide the funds, bringing some much-needed public transportation to the common people and offering them the option, which had been formerly reserved only for Shinra, to travel the skies on a new form of transportation. Instead, Green Earth had jumped on the bandwagon after Reeve had given them some sort of fancy presentation, then had convinced Cid that Rufus Shinra was looking for a parts and supplies delivery system, and Highwind Corporation was the right agent to fill it.

Cid had argued halfheartedly, pointing out that Cloud Strife was the resident delivery boy, not Cid Highwind, but Reeve had finally convinced him. _We need the money_, he had said. _You're still living in the old world, thinking that Shinra's there to take your dreams away at the first opportunity. But that world's gone. There's no point in running from Shinra any longer._

He had argued back, saying he wasn't running from Shinra, but in the end, he had to admit to himself that he was. Shinra had represented the ruin of his life, the part of his younger years that he never wanted to go back to. Having Reeve as a partner was one thing, being at Rufus Shinra's beck and call again was another. There was something else he had to do also, something in which money was a factor, and after he'd thought long and hard on the subject, he told Shera that he would go into business with Green Earth only if she married him.

It was a bit funny getting used to a world with regional governments instead of one huge overarching organization, but after a few years, Cid decided that he liked it. Shera managed Highwind, Inc's inventories and product line development, and he and Reeve had hired on a few employees in different cities for tracking and delivery purposes. One of Shinra's old airship factories south of New Midgar had been converted by Reeve into their new manufacturing center, and then Rufus had invited Cid to move up to Corel. Reeve told him that it was good to have one agent permanently in Corel while one traveled back and forth to New Midgar. _Why can't you be the guy in Corel?_ Cid had argued, and Reeve had said patiently, _Because I'm a politician, and you're not._

Cid couldn't fault that logic. Reeve was out there making business connections, petitioning for funds, presenting financial options for contracts with different governments, and Cid wasn't good at any of that. He was a pilot and a mechanic, and he belonged with the ships. He'd come to Corel with some trepidation that he'd be the lowest man on the totem pole, but instead he had been somewhat surprised to see that Green Earth in Corel was a tiny affair: a couple hundred employees, a fleet of twenty trucks and five of Cid's airships, a business compound that looked more like a ranch. Rufus knew everyone by name.

Shera had come with him to Corel in the beginning, and before the problems began, they were mostly happy. Or maybe the problems had always been there, and he'd been too blind to see. He had thought of her as someone who was always there, to make his tea in the mornings and to have dinner ready at night when he came home, to mend his clothes and pack his lunch. She'd been invaluable to him and Reeve as an assistant, a woman who was smart and resourceful and who knew Shinra's old airship manufacturing processes forward and backward. They had a nice house on the outskirts of the city, and on his off days, they'd sit outside in the evenings and barbeque, or have a few drinks and talk. He'd been happy, more or less. He'd thought she was, too.

Then there had come the small things, how she would cry at night in bed when she thought he was asleep, or in the mornings when she would cling to him before he went to work. He shrugged it off, attributing it to some weird female thing. But it didn't stop, only escalated, until he began snapping at her and she started snapping back. She'd never done that before in all the years they'd known each other, and at first it startled him and then it made him angry. It got bad enough that he'd crash at Reeve's place at night sometimes, and even Reno and Rude had felt sorry for him and invited him once or twice to hang out with them at the bar till early in the morning on weekends, so that he wouldn't have to go home. Elena started bringing lunches to him in paper bags. Her cooking wasn't bad, but it just wasn't the same. Even so, he had been too proud to apologize, and that was when he learned that Shera Highwind was a proud woman as well, and she had had enough.

One day he had come home when he felt brave enough to try and calm the storm that was home life in the evenings, and he'd found her in the bedroom packing a suitcase. He was almost angry enough to slap her, but he restrained himself, did not, because he would not be a man who went after people weaker than himself.

That was the problem, he had realized, in the long lonely months after Shera's departure. Cid had always thought of Shera as weaker than himself, a nice woman, a good woman, but weak. She'd once been willing to die for him, and he thought that would always be true. _It's not your fault,_ Reeve had consoled him. _Sometimes old friends just don't make the best partners._

_You'll find someone else_, Rude told him in one of his rare moments of sympathy. That was in the months just following Cloud Strife's disappearance and Tifa Lockhart's affections were out of reach, and Cid had almost appreciated the sentiment coming from a fellow suffering soul. The months passed and the emptiness got a little more bearable every day. Shera called occasionally, but he let Reeve answer the phone when it was at work and let it ring if he was at home. It didn't surprise him when Reeve let him know one day that he'd hired Shera as production supervisor at the New Midgar plant. She was, after all, the best person for the job, and there she could do what she loved and they wouldn't have to see each other. It worked out just fine.

He was a mostly one-man shop here in Corel, with the rest of the engineers and employees still in the Midgar area. There were a bevy of kids trickling in and out for part-time work on different days - youngsters from Corel who knew the insides of an engine pretty well and wanted to make a few extra gil - but most of them worked several months and then were gone to see the wide world, leaving him alone again. Ostensibly, he was here to make the delivery process smoother. But mostly these days he felt he was in Corel so Rufus could keep an eye on him. Maybe it was the old Shinra training kicking in.

The warehouse back door opened. He tensed, ready to tell Rufus Shinra that he was tired of being interrupted.

"Captain?"

It wasn't Rufus. It was Alan, one of the Corel kids, the mechanic that occasionally worked part-time hours for them. "What's up?" Cid said, flicking his cigarette a bit guiltily under one shoe and grinding it into the dirt. He wasn't supposed to smoke in front of the kids.

"The _Bronco_'s back. You said you'd want to know firsthand when it came in. Seems like we've got a priority unloading message."

Valentine. "Got it," Cid said. "Thanks a lot." He waited till the kid was out of sight around the corner, then picked up the cigarette butt and threw it in the trash before heading through the gate in the low wire fence, toward the landing pads. He could see the bulk of the _Bronco_'s fuselage above the new trees dotting the landscape, and what he could make out seemed in good condition, undamaged. He hoped that meant Valentine hadn't met with any trouble getting there and back.

The airship's engines had shut down by the time he arrived, panting and a bit sweaty, to the launching area. A team of medics bearing the insignia of the local Corel hospital were trundling a stretcher down the loading ramp, and he frowned, headed towards it as someone tapped him on the shoulder. He stopped.

"Cid," Valentine said from behind him, and he tensed.

"What happened?"

The man on the stretcher, he could see now, was Rude, the entire left side of his face bandaged, and the bandages drenched in blood. "We thought we would come straight back," Valentine said quietly. "Rude was fine for the first hour or so, and then he started losing blood. We were going as fast as we could. I'm not an expert pilot, so I will admit I might have strained the engines a little more than they were built for. You should probably give them a secondary post-flight inspection."

"I'll worry about that later," Cid said. He was watching the last passenger as he skidded down the ramp, duffel bag over his shoulder. "What about Reno?"

Valentine moved to one side. "Reno's fine. A bit shaken, but fine." He nodded at the red-haired man, who trudged over to join them, watching the stretcher as the medics loaded it onto the ambulance sitting to the side of the ramp.

Cid shoved his hands into his pockets to stop his palms from sweating. "What the hell's going on?"

"I'm all right," Reno said. His face looked grey and pasty, and his hand was clenched on the butt of the long pistol holstered at his hip. "Rude should be fine after some medical attention. He found more than he bargained for, as you can see."

"Yeah, I can damn well see that. What'd Rufus do now, send you two off on some damn fool mission without respect for your own hides?"

Reno's smile was shadowed. "I signed up for this job," he said quietly. "As long as Rufus needs me, I'll go."

That was an idiotic notion if Cid ever heard one, but he refrained from saying so. Tseng had been moved on to bigger and better things, and Elena was a commander in her own right now, with the responsibility of protecting Green Earth's cargo and shipments. But Reno and Rude had refused to leave Shinra's side. It obviously wasn't the money or the benefits that had made the two stay on with Rufus Shinra - it was, Cid had decided, plain, pure stubbornness, with a side of stupidity thrown in, and maybe a bit of childish idealism.

"Speaking of which, Rufus Shinra's back," Cid said instead, deciding that whatever was going on was none of his business, and he'd worm answers out of someone sooner or later. "He got in this morning."

Reno and Valentine exchanged looks. "Guess it's time to face the music," Reno said with another weary smile. "I'll go see if he's around in his office."

They watched him go, throwing his bag over one wrinkled coat shoulder and shuffling off like a defeated man. "If I were him, I'd go to bed," Cid muttered. Damn, he needed another cigarette now. The sight of the blood covering half of Rude's face had given him the jitters. "We don't need anyone else in the hospital."

"I need to borrow another ship again," Valentine said, as if he hadn't heard Cid speak. "It can be the _Bronco_, but I'd rather have one to head out immediately, and the _Bronco_ might need some repairs."

Cid narrowed his eyes. "I've got two on the docking line at the moment. The _Myrna_'s due for a cargo run tomorrow, but I can give you her little sister. She's an airplane, not an airship. Carries two passengers. Got no weapons, though."

"That's fine. It will be just me."

He crossed his arms over his chest and turned to the other man, noting the dangerous gleam in the red eyes, the way the metal hand flexed, then released, then flexed again with a caged animal's restlessness. "What fool thing are you running off to do now?"

Vincent Valentine's more-than-human eyes narrowed. "I'm going to Nibelheim," he said.


	7. Chapter 6: Denzel

_VI: Denzel_

The guard at the desk behind the frosted glass looked down at Denzel's identification card, looked back up at his face, then looked back down at the card. "You don't have all-access permission," the man told him, the bored tone of his voice contrasting sharply with the crisp motions of his hands across the computer keyboard in front of him. "I can't let you in."

"I know that, sir," Denzel said patiently. This was the third guard in a long series of guards as he had been passed from office to office with the same response. I can't let you in. You're not authorized. "If you'll give Mr. Tuesti a call, he can vouch for me."

"Mr. Tuesti is currently unavailable," the guard said in the same bored voice. "I'm sorry, kid, I'll have to escort you out-"

The beeping of the intercom startled both of them, and the guard glanced at Denzel accusingly under his bushy black eyebrows before slapping the talk button. "Level Three security," he barked.

The voice from the intercom was tinny. "Hey, I got a priority message here from a Reeve Tuesti. One of the guys at the executive meeting today?"

The guard glared at Denzel again. "What about him?"

"He's looking for someone. A Denzel Strife? Said they were supposed to meet upstairs in the conference hallway about ten minutes ago."

Denzel looked at the wall, the floor, anywhere but the guard's accusing eyes, feeling guilty though he hadn't quite done anything wrong. It was Reeve who had requested this meeting, Reeve who had asked Denzel to take the day off work and show up at the palatial new government offices in downtown New Midgar. "To catch up on old times," he'd said. Denzel had used some of his hard-earned savings the week before to buy himself a new suit, charcoal grey with a white shirt and gold tie. Marlene had taken in the pants a little bit for him and hemmed the sleeves of the coat while looking disapproving.

"You really shouldn't get yourself involved in these government affairs, Denny. I don't trust those politicians."

"It's only Reeve," he protested, trying to sound grown-up, official, in charge. "He's practically family."

Marlene didn't buy it. "I know what you're gonna do. I see you hanging out by the corner store, looking at those police recruiting posters on the billboard."

She hadn't said that he couldn't go, which he took as a sign that she wasn't going to stop him. Tifa had been busy these few days, ever since Reno had phoned with the urgent news that Rude had been injured, and she had left for Corel yesterday on Denzel's bike. They only had the two motorcycles between the three of them, and Rusk and Berl, the two other delivery boys they'd hired, were off on deliveries of their own. So he figured while he was stranded in Edge until Tifa came back, he might as well make good use of his time.

Part of him did feel guilty that he was pursuing this now, when Tifa might very well move to Corel for good one of these days to be with Rude, and the business would fall onto his shoulders. He could sell it to one of the many interested buyers that were always pounding on the door, wanting a piece of their small but successful service, but he didn't think Tifa would forgive him if he did so. It was their last link to Cloud.

"Fine, kid," the guard said. "You win."

Reeve was standing at the corner of the hallway when the elevator doors opened, arms crossed over a crisp blue suit coat, staring at a space of blank wall. "Sorry to keep you waiting," Denzel said, after a minute when the doors closed and Reeve did not move.

The dark-haired man stirred, head jerking over to where Denzel stood. "Oh, Denzel! I'm sorry about that," Reeve said, moving to him and putting his hand out. Denzel shook it firmly. His hands were cold. "I didn't think the guards would give you that much trouble. Isn't your last name on your ID card?"

Denzel wondered why that was important. "Yeah." He flipped open his wallet, pulling out the card. Denzel Strife, age 21. The terrible picture to the left of his name had been taken when he was fifteen, but Edge's identification services wouldn't change it for him until next year, when he turned twenty-two. He showed it to Reeve, who took it carefully, glancing over it.

"There it is for sure," he murmured. "I wonder..."

"Reeve?"

"It's nothing," the other man said dismissively, handing Denzel back his ID. "How's Tifa? I hear she and Rude are engaged now."

Denzel shrugged, tucking his wallet away in his back pocket. "Yeah. She's in Corel. Rude was hurt."

Reeve's sharp gaze shot back to him, frowning. "Hurt? What happened?"

He opened his mouth to answer that he had been the last to know, that Tifa had left in the middle of the night with no word, and Marlene had given him the news the next morning. If he hadn't heard from Marlene's own mouth, he would have sworn Tifa was pulling another Cloud on them. He didn't want to believe that she would - not the sweet, beautiful woman who he had known as mother for the last thirteen years of his life, but since Cloud's disappearance, he thought privately that Tifa had disappeared too, lost somewhere in the landscape of her own memories as she went through the motions of living and breathing. It wasn't Rude - he liked Rude, but it just wasn't the same.

"I don't know," he said instead.

Reeve broke into a smile that softened the edges of the dangerous-looking mustache he had taken to wearing these days. "I'm sorry. Are you hungry? I was about to go to lunch."

"I ate a bit before I left home, but I'm not going to pass up free food."

Reeve laughed at that. "Spoken like a true honorary member of AVALANCHE. There's a small cafe two blocks away that I frequent when I'm in Midgar. They serve Wutaian cuisine, if you're up for it. I'll warn you it's a bit spicy, so it's all right if we go somewhere else."

"I can handle it," Denzel said indignantly. "Yuffie used to cook for us when she came to visit."

The restaurant was decorated in muted reds and golds, long fake paper scrolls adorning the walls under paper lanterns. Reeve ordered seafood and Denzel had a spicy beef dish that oddly enough did taste like what he remembered of Yuffie's cooking when she'd stayed with them in Edge for a month, after the Geostigma scare. It seemed a very long time ago now that he thought back on it.

He stole a glance across the table at Reeve, who was eating his fish in small, elegant bites. Reeve had been a staple, however infrequent, of what he remembered of his childhood years, stopping in once or twice every year or three months on the way to what he now realized were government transportation summits in Midgar. When he'd finally asked Cloud about the strange man with the beard, Cloud had called him "a traitor reformed for the better" and refused to say any more. It had been Tifa who had filled Denzel in on AVALANCHE and Cait Sith, on Reeve's defection and the eventual defeat of Sephiroth. It was more history than a ten year old boy's brain could handle, and Denzel had mulled over the story for days afterward, awaiting Reeve's next arrival eagerly but too shy to do more than hide behind the wall and stare as Reeve came by on his next visit seven months later.

As he grew older, the visits became a little more frequent, and he found that Reeve's stories fascinated him. The man was a world traveler, and he'd bring back small souvenirs for Denzel and Marlene - odd-shaped globes of light ostensibly from the cliffs of Cosmo Canyon, strange seashells he'd found on the shores of southern beaches. Marlene would thank him politely and put the gifts away, but Denzel quizzed Reeve on them for hours, asking what, how, where, and why. There was more to life than Edge, and he'd vowed that one day, he was going to get out of this city for more than just a day or two of global deliveries. Cloud and Tifa had traveled extensively when they were younger, Reeve had said, and Denzel knew it had something to do with AVALANCHE and the man Tifa had called Sephiroth, but her history had been brief, and Reeve had refused to say much more.

"So what are you going to do?"

Denzel started, focused back on the man sitting across from him. Reeve had put down his chopsticks and was staring at him with an odd, determined look. "What?" Denzel said, bewildered.

"You want to join the police in Midgar, don't you?"

It was not surprising that Reeve had guessed. Denzel fidgeted. "I guess I feel a little useless," he said. "The business is running good, but that's more Marlene and Tifa than me. I'm not much of a businessman. I know Tifa wants me to take over the bar one day..." he trailed off. "I dunno," he finished lamely. "I was thinking about joining up with the police force and see how it suits me. Marlene doesn't like it, though."

"It's not Shinra, you know," Reeve said. "The City Patrol's a credible organization."

Denzel shifted uncomfortably. "I told Marlene that. She didn't say much, but I know she still doesn't like it. I haven't told Tifa."

"Tifa and I talked about it a year and a half ago," Reeve said, taking a bit of his fish calmly and washing it down with a sip of water. "She was of the opinion that you and Cloud were much alike. If you decided to join, she wouldn't stop you. Or, as she put it, she couldn't stop you."

That made Denzel feel more uncomfortable than before. "I don't want to disappoint her-" he began weakly, and Reeve shook his head with a sad smile.

"You're not."

"But the bar-"

"I've known Tifa for fifteen years. Trust me. It's not the bar she's worried about - she'd rather see you doing something that makes you happy."

Denzel stabbed at his meal halfheartedly with his fork. "It's just that she looks so sad whenever I bring up the topic of me leaving."

"I think," Reeve said, "that's just because that reminds her of someone she used to know."

_Cloud_, thought Denzel, but did not say his name, though he felt his appetite suddenly disappear. He put down his fork. "I...can't," he said. "At least not now. I want to join, but I need to wait, at least until she and Rude get married. I won't be the next man in her life to run off and leave her alone. Tifa deserves better."

"Good boy," Reeve said. "I'd prefer you to stay out of all of this government mess for the time being."

Denzel blinked. "What? Don't you work for Midgar?"

Reeve smiled. "I don't work for Midgar. I don't work for Green Earth, either. Tifa said that this was what you would want, and I told her I'd try to make you see her point. But I think in the end, it's best for you to stay with her...as long as you're needed." He was looking at Denzel, but Denzel had the sensation the dark-haired man wasn't really seeing him, looking through him to some scene long ago and far away.

"Reeve?"

The other man shook himself, the smile coming back to his face. "I'm sorry. Would you like dessert?"

They shared a bowl of what looked like gelatin pudding and tasted like liquid sweetened almonds, reminiscing and making small talk, and Reeve paid the bill. "I've got to be getting back to my meeting," he said at the door. "Would you like me to walk you back to your place?"

Denzel frowned. "I'm not a little kid, Reeve. I'll be fine. Besides, Marlene wanted me to grab some things from the grocery on the way home."

"That's fine," Reeve said calmly. Nothing seemed to faze the man, and Denzel remembered faintly a scene from years ago before Geostigma and Kadaj had come into their lives - Cloud and Reeve leaning on the bar counter talking, Marlene with Tifa in the kitchen. There had been a loud gas explosion and he had barely time to watch the two men glance at each other and dash as one into the back, Cloud returning almost instantaneously with a singed Tifa, Marlene in her arms. There had been another explosive noise and the walls had shook, and then Reeve emerged a moment later, soaking wet, with puddles trailing him back through the charred kitchen door.

_Sorry_, he had said apologetically. _I called Leviathan._

It was with a sort of lump in his throat that he watched Reeve go; it would probably be another six months or a year before he was back this way again. Sometimes when Denzel thought about the man, it would be as if he were still that ten-year-old boy hiding behind the wall, basking in the glow of hero worship and mouth dry at the thought of meeting his idol face to face. Even after all these years, Reeve was an enigma.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and began slowly retracing his steps back to Edge. It would have been nice to have his bike. The weather was turning foul again; the frequent spring squalls that plagued the area had been especially fierce this year, and from the look of the sky and the clouds, another one would be coming this way shortly.

He was about half a block from the border of Midgar when the storm broke, peppering him first with cool sprinkles of rain and then quickly turning into a raging downpour that had everyone within sight running for cover. Denzel ran for the nearest alleyway, hoping that the roof overhang of the houses that lined the narrow space would provide enough cover until the storm let up. He wondered if Cloud or Tifa had ever had to deal with such things. They probably made materia back then for the specific purpose of sheltering people from the elements, but materia was hard to find now that Mako was gone for good, and even the cheap stuff was tens of thousands of gil a piece. Tifa kept her and Cloud's old materia in the safe in her bedroom; she'd showed it to Denzel a few times, but he'd never seen her use it since Kadaj.

He'd just made himself comfortable under the eaves and settled in to wait out the storm when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps and muffled voices, the sound of a fist smacking flesh.

"Let me go, you shitheads!"

"Apparently he hasn't learned his lesson," a deep voice said, and the sound of flesh meeting flesh again. The captive cried out. Denzel stiffened against the wall, easing back behind a stack of barrels and peering out just enough to make out three men driving another figure in front of them. From the captive's voice, it was a man. His hands were bound with what looked like a beam of light encircling his wrists, and his head lolled back as if he was drunk.

When his gaze went to the other three men, he barely restrained a gasp; the three were wearing Midgar City Patrol uniforms.

"Captain's waiting," the deep voice said. "After this one, we'll need just one more for the next experiment." Denzel recognized him as the middle of the three men, and the two policemen on either side of him nodded. One of them kicked the prisoner, who collapsed to the pavement with a muffled groan. The other policeman bent and picked him up like a sack of meal, throwing him over his shoulder, and the trio disappeared around the corner into the rain.

Denzel huddled back into his corner, wondering if he should follow them. But visibility was next to none in this downpour, and if he was caught, he would be in worse trouble than he had already been in his entire life. He was no stranger to sneaking around back ways and stealing for a living in the slums, but that had been years ago, and he thought guiltily of what Tifa would say if she found out he had gone back to his old ways.

Besides, the Midgar City Patrol were not a crew to be tangled with. He thought back to his conversation with Reeve earlier and shivered. _It's not Shinra_, Reeve had said. Denzel didn't know much about Shinra, but he did know about the guards who had worn the faceless helmets, the torture, the burning, the slaughter of innocent civilians like his parents.

On one hand, maybe these three policemen were common crooks who had stolen uniforms and were out to mug fellow street sweepers.

On the other hand, maybe Reeve was wrong. Those men hadn't moved like common crooks; they had moved like men who had been trained in combat and knew what they were doing. They had talked about an experiment, and the very word had made Denzel uneasy, though he couldn't place the uneasiness that seemed to be linked to that word.

He stayed there, huddled close and very still, until he heard the rain on the eaves lessen to a cheerful pitter-patter. A few stray shafts of sunlight spattered the moisture-heavy air, but Denzel felt heavy and slow, as if his body had been weighed down by water. He pushed himself up from his shelter spot and headed back to the street, down the way he had come by the Wutaian restaurant on the way to the government buildings, to see if Reeve was still there.

He'd rounded the alley corner and was halfway down the deserted sidewalk when he heard a scraping noise to his left. He turned to see what it was. Strong hands gripped his arms and he found himself falling, hitting the pavement with a cracking sound and the metallic smell of blood, and then nothing.


	8. Chapter 7: Tifa

_VII. Tifa_

"Denzel's missing."

Reno's mouth was set in a tight, compressed line of worry, shoulders slumped and exhausted. Tifa could see him leaning heavily on the doorjamb. He hadn't looked hurt or tired when he had picked her up at the Corel Airport on a borrowed scooter, whisking her through traffic with only a few clipped words. She'd been worried then, but in the dim lamplight, she decided that he looked like he hadn't slept in days.

Just like her.

"What?" she said dumbly.

Reno took two more steps into the room, his hand grasping at his belt for a weapon that wasn't there. "Marlene just called. Reeve's there at the bar now with her. He'd met Denzel for lunch two days ago and no one's seen the kid since."

Denzel, missing? He'd been gone for days on end before on deliveries, just as Cloud had, and Tifa had never paid it any mind. Out of all the men in her life, those two were the ones she had tried not to think too hard about.

"Maybe he's just out on a delivery," she told Reno hopefully. "He's done it before. Sometimes he's so absentminded that he forgets to leave a note."

Reno frowned. "I hope so. Marlene's holding up pretty good, but seems like Reeve's the one who wants to mobilize the city for a manhunt. I wouldn't put it past him, either. He's got the funds."

"He's watched Denzel grow up," Tifa said softly. "Practically the boy's foster father. I..." she trailed off. She what? She was in Corel, had spent the entire day yesterday sitting by Rude's bedside and watching him sleep, soothing him in soft tones when he spasmed from what seemed like black nightmares. _Cloud_, he repeated over and over. _No, Cloud, don't do this._ After the sun had set and the nightmares grew worse, Tifa had called Reno into the room, and fled Rude's hoarse whispering of the name of the man she still loved.

Reno had found her later slumped morosely over an untouched drink in the town's only bar, a tiny wooden affair that looked like it had been constructed out of more of the wreckage of Barret's hometown and then whitewashed, though it was a sight better than the ramshackle slums that had occupied the scrub-brush slopes fifteen years ago during their chase of Sephiroth. "Lockhart?" his voice had said from behind her, and she did not turn, just watched him out of the corner of her eye as he slid onto the stool next to her and cupped his head in his hands. It was the first time she'd seen Reno enter a bar and not order anything.

"Corel looks nice," she told him flatly. "Congratulations."

"Don't say things you don't mean."

As usual, Reno wore his sharp tongue on his sleeve. "I was being genuine," she said. "I hadn't been back to Corel since before-" she stopped. "Never mind," she amended quickly. "Anyway, you guys have done a good job in the eight years since then."

She was half afraid to look at him just in case the look on his face was one of pity, but when Reno spoke, it was with his usual jaunty carelessness. "I take no credit," he said blandly. "I'm just one of the lackeys. Congratulate Tseng or Cid Highwind whenever you see them. They're the ones putting in the real work - Tseng with the manpower and Highwind with the transport."

Tifa took a sip of her drink, decided she didn't like it, and pushed it to the side. "Want some?"

"If you're not drinking it, it means the drink sucks, so no."

She almost smiled at that. "Thanks. I think."

"Rude's awake," Reno said.

It took her a few seconds to decide a correct response. "That's good," she said. "I'll go see him after we leave here."

"I'm going back out to Nibelheim tonight." Reno hesitated, curling his fists as if trying to test the waters. "I was hoping you'd come with me."

The babbling of voices and usual bar din roared in her ears and she clenched her fingers on the glass of her unfinished drink, half-wishing for her gloves so she could shatter it into a million pieces. The dream she'd had a week ago flared to life in her mind again - Sephiroth silhouetted against the roaring flames, the buster sword heavy in her hands, her pleading voice asking why. _Why, Sephiroth, why?_

The heavy beams and tubes of the reactor ceiling, with that one name imprinted over and over again.

_JENOVA_

"Did Rude say anything to you?"

Rude. _No_, Tifa wanted to say. _Rude hasn't said anything to me. I can guess._

"Tifa?"

"I'm...sorry," she said, and knocked over her stool in her eagerness to flee that place. She wasn't quite sure where she was going, except that interior of the bar was too hot and too bright, and the dry Corel night air was cool, dusty, someplace where she could lose herself in the scrub brush and desert vegetation dotting the moonlit hills. The thick tread of her sensible hiking boots were muffled on the smooth, paved roads, and she did not remember the way back to the place where Rude lay, but that did not quite matter.

Nevertheless, it was without too much surprise that she found herself standing at his door, raising one hand to knock softly, sliding it open at his muffled permission to enter.

Rude's face looked unnaturally pale in the soft light, but his expression was one of a man well-rested and healing, and the swelling around his eyes and mouth was almost gone. She resisted the urge to run to him and bury her face in his chest and cry her eyes out. Tifa Lockhart was not that weak. Instead, she went to the dresser and poured him a glass from the stone pitcher, which had been full of ice cubes five hours ago and now was full of lukewarm water.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been worse," he said, accepting the glass with a murmured thanks and downing it in one gulp. He turned to place it on the table, then glanced at her, his gaze softening.

"Thank you for coming after me."

She shifted uncomfortably. "It's nothing. Reno called, and...well. It just didn't seem right that I should stay in Edge when you were-"

His good arm came around her and she found herself falling back against his chest onto the bed in the position that she had so hoped to avoid earlier. The tears were inevitable, and she wrapped her own arms around him and sobbed. His hands stroked her hair in smooth motions, his breath warm and familiar against her cheek. "Tifa," he said. "I'm all right. Don't worry about me."

She didn't dare look up at him when her tears ran out, simply snuffled against his shirt and closed her eyes, listening to the beat of his heart. Rude was a big man - big hands and big shoulders and a large, muscular chest. She always felt small nestled into the crook of his arm. Cloud, on the other hand-

"I was afraid," she told him, speaking into the folds of the blanket wrapped loosely around him. "I thought - well, Reno didn't give me details. I didn't even get to tell Denzel-" she stopped, stiffening. Rude must have sensed the change immediately, because he shifted and let her roll over, push herself against the bed and stare at him with wide eyes. "Rude, Reeve says that Denzel is missing."

He frowned. The expression made several small creases between his eyes, which she usually found endearing when the situation was not so serious. "Are you sure he's just not out on an unexpected delivery?"

Tifa stared at the wall, trying to bore holes in it with her eyes. "I'm hoping that's the case." She licked her lips. "If he's not back by the day after tomorrow, I'm going to look for him."

Cloud would have railed at her, telling her it was a stupid idea. Her job was to run the bar, and if anyone was going to do the looking and sweaty, unpleasant work, it was Cloud Strife. Rude, on the other hand, tightened his arm around her shoulders, and said, "Where do you plan to look?"

"I don't know," she said softly. "But I already lost one man. I'm not losing another."

Rude was quiet. "Did Reno tell you?" he asked at last. "About Nibelheim."

"He wants me to go with him tonight."

"Don't go," Rude said, and the quiet undercurrent in his voice was so suddenly deadly that she twisted around to stare at him again, at the bright piercing eyes too often hidden behind dark glasses, the thick eyebrows and the shadow of unshaven skin around his mouth, the high arch of his nose and the way his cheekbones shaped the planes of his face that she had come to cherish.

"Part of me says that I shouldn't let Reno go alone," she admitted, trying not to show that Rude's surge of passion over the topic had unnerved her somewhat. "On the other hand, there's Denzel. I'll be going somewhere either way. I can't sit here and do nothing while the world turns around me, Rude."

"I understand," he said. "But don't go to Nibelheim."

Ire rose in her for a brief moment, anger that this man, now that they were engaged to be married, would be trying to dictate her life. But that was short-lived, and she drew her legs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. "I don't know what to do," she whispered. "I'm scared, Rude. My life seems to be coming apart at the seams, and I can't stop it. I'm a fighter...at least I thought I was. But I feel so...helpless."

Rude's hand slipped down to the small of her back and rested there, a warm reminder of his presence. "I'm here, aren't I?"

"Yes," she told him quietly. "And I understand that's the reason you don't want me to go to Nibelheim. But if there's something that has to do with-"

"It has nothing to do with you," he said harshly, and then swallowed. "Tifa. Please."

"Rude, Reno showed me the star pendant. And you were talking in your sleep."

His gaze met hers for a moment and then shifted, looking somewhere beyond her, far away beyond the wall and the borders of Corel into the wilderness outside this small oasis of civilization. "Forgive me," he said. "I'm just trying to protect you."

A surge of an emotion she could not name, along with a reckless boldness, rose within her and she unwrapped her arms from her knees, crawling forward and slipping under the blanket, pressing up against Rude's warm body with her own. "I know," she told him, stroking his face gently with her hands. "But I'm past the point of needing protection."

He closed his eyes. "Then tell me what you do need, Tifa."

The ghost of a memory flitted before her. _I'm the same Cloud you grew up with, aren't I?_

"Rude..." she whispered, entwining his good hand with one of hers, "I need some time...Just give me a little time."

--

They lay like that for a while, holding each other and drowsing, until Tifa felt Rude's breathing deepen and slow and the injured man slept. She untangled herself from him and got up softly, shivering as the chill desert night air hit her skin, pulling the blankets around him and kissing him lightly on the forehead, and then left his room.

She followed the hallways of the hospital aimlessly for a while, pacing with her hands clasped behind her back, half wishing for her old combat gloves that were packed safely in her suitcase. She had taken them on a whim, opening the dusty old safe behind her bed for the first time in eight years and pulling out the Premium Heart. The gloves were worn but clean, the materia slots empty. All the materia was hidden in another box at the back of the safe, and she'd taken that container out, too, crouched over the open treasure chest of softly sparkling globes, and feeling horribly low.

In the end, she'd fitted half of the materia slots and shoved the box back into the safe, as if filling them all would have broken some unspoken taboo. The materia she'd chosen was nothing powerful; Knights of Round they'd given to Yuffie as well as most of the other powerful summon materia. After the incident with Kadaj, the former ninja had whisked the box of it away to Wutai, and as far as Tifa knew, it was still there. Nanaki had departed back to Cosmo Canyon with most of the party's command materia. The materia she and Cloud kept in the safe was more the harmless stuff - fire, ice, lightning, a cure spell or two. She had hoped that she would never have to use it again.

"What should I do?" she wondered aloud, pausing at one of the large picture windows along the corridor. Whoever had designed the new Corel hospital had had an eye for beauty - the window framed the mountains to the northwest, where the Corel reactor had once loomed and now where there was nothing but rolling hills and stars as far as she could see. A shooting star flickered, disappeared behind the mountain peaks.

She'd leave tomorrow morning, she decided. It had nothing to do with either Rude or Cloud. She would not let it. Even if Rude had not protested so strongly against her going to Nibelheim, Denzel was her immediate concern; she would go back to Edge and talk to Reeve, find out what he and Denzel had been discussing over lunch and how he was sure the boy was missing, then see if Marlene had seen anything suspicious. Marlene was her dependable one, while Denzel was the dreamer, always fantasizing about something bigger outside the city in which they lived and the life to which he had been born. Sometimes she felt guilty for not telling him the whole truth about Cloud and Sephiroth, but she'd always told herself that he didn't need to know.

The past, as Cloud had always said, was past, and the only thing they could do was go on living.

"And even that's a lie now," she whispered, pressing her forehead against the glass. A fierce sort of sorrow swept over her and left a burning in its wake. She was glad now she'd packed her gloves; she'd take one of the Green Earth motorbikes out tomorrow instead of going back to Costa del Sol on the airship. The bike was almost as fast, and she could use a good fight or two with some monsters.

_I'm a fighter_, she had told Rude. Tifa Lockhart did not sit and mope. Tifa Lockhart stood and acted, and that was what she would do.

She didn't hear the footsteps down the hall until the figure appeared out of the corner of her eye. She thought it was Reno, turned to tell him that she was sorry about earlier, but she couldn't go with him. She had to see if Denzel was all right before anything else.

"I don't-" she began, and then stopped in surprise.

The girl - no, woman - in the dim nighttime lighting was muscular and slim beneath a light jacket and functional work pants, the round face no longer childish, her black hair grown out long and a sharpness in her gaze that hadn't been there eight years ago. The Conformer, giant and jagged-edged, was strapped to her back and should have dwarfed her, but instead looked right, natural, merely another extension of the Wutai lady's dangerous grace.

"Tifa!" Yuffie Kisaragi exclaimed, a smile lighting her features. "Reno said I'd find you here."


	9. Chapter 8: Yuffie

_VIII. Yuffie_

The first glimpse Yuffie had of Rufus Shinra in almost thirteen years was the back of his golden head as he bent over a filing cabinet, scribbling something on a sheet of crumpled paper. His office was smaller than she had expected, with the straight-backed, leather executive chair the only item of luxury in eyesight. The hardwood floor was faintly scratched, the heavy wooden desk antique and a little rundown, functional bookcases lining the walls of the room from floor to ceiling except for where the large picture window opened out into the front lawn of the Green Earth complex, behind Rufus' desk. The sun was going down over the mountains.

Yuffie cleared her throat.

He looked as surprised to see her as she was to be in Corel, the pen almost dropping from his hand as he blinked, and then smiled and said, "I didn't think you would come."

"You twisted my arms and practically dragged me here," she said, plunking her bag down on the floor and crossing her arms. The Conformer twisted uncomfortably on its strap behind her back at the movement. The weapon was not made to be carried while she crossed her arms, but she didn't care. "Don't act so shocked, Shinra."

Rufus laughed and ran one hand through his hair. It was as blonde and thick as ever, though something in his face was unsettled, as if he truly had not expected her here. "I'm glad you made it, then," he said. "Do sit down. There's a chair over there in the corner."

"I'll stand," Yuffie said. "I won't be long. Just came by to tell you that I'm holed up in your visitor's quarters. Nice place you got here."

"Have some coffee?"

She frowned. "I hate coffee. And who drinks coffee at five in the evening? Wait - are you trying to be hospitable?"

He put down the pen and paper on his desk and sighed, the smile dropping from his face. "You act as if we're enemies. Or at the least, strangers."

Yuffie bent her head a little to hide the rush of blood to her face. She was acting trapped and cornered and knew it, but there didn't seem to be anything she could do about it. It had been, as far back as she could remember, one defense mechanism she'd thrown out in front of her in awkward social situations, pushing the other person back behind the wall of her own stubborn indifference. "Sorry," she muttered. "I guess I wasn't sure what to expect."

Rufus' expression softened, and she looked away. He looked like Lord Godo after one of his rages, whenever she made him angry and he'd spent his temper berating her stupidity, before calming down into the benevolent father and launching into one of his parables. But that was the past, and she was not a child any longer. "I think we were both a little surprised," he said, coming from behind the desk and holding out his hand. "It's been a while since we last saw each other. Truce?"

She stared at his outstretched hand, then dared looked into his face, into the blue eyes that held no guile, only truth. "The last time I saw you, your sorry ass was being dragged out of the Shinra building by emergency rescue."

"The last time I saw you," he countered, "you were trying to kill me."

She cracked a smile at that, and stuck her hand out. His grip was firm but gentle, and he had smaller hands than she expected for a man who had once been the most powerful man in the world. "I'll shake on that," she said. "Truce."

As he started to release her hand and go back around the corner of his desk, she realized suddenly that he was limping, holding onto the desk side with one hand. She clamped onto his hand tightly, as if letting him go would break the fragile promise they'd just made. Her eyes flashed to the filing cabinet and the black-and-silver cane that leaned casually against one side. Not quite surreptitiously, she glanced at his legs. She couldn't tell anything from the long pants that covered them, but there was something not quite right with the way his feet lined up and the way they moved, slow and crooked like an old man's.

She'd known that he had lost most of the use of his legs after the Shinra building collapsed. Everyone knew that. He'd mentioned it once or twice in his letters. But seeing it now somehow drove the point home that Rufus Shinra was no longer invincible.

"It's nothing," he said, before she could venture a word. "Bodies are fickle, temporary things, in any case."

"Does it..." she hesitated. "Hurt?"

Rufus considered this for a moment. "Sometimes," he said finally. "When the weather changes. In the mornings, at night." He smiled again, as if to reassure her. "I've gotten used to it over the past fifteen years, after my sorry ass, as you put it, was rescued. I had plenty of time to think while I was trapped there in bed, recovering."

Yuffie flushed. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking when I said that."

"Again, it's nothing. If you'll let go of my hand now-?"

Her flush deepened and she dropped his hand, cheeks burning. "Sorry," she said again. _Yuffie Kisaragi, this is definitely not your day._

He released her hand and stepped back to the desk, paused, seemed to think better of it and instead gestured to a heavy wooden chair by the wall. "Please sit and have some coffee," he said. "It's freshly brewed, black, but I can add sugar and cream if you like. You look tired, and I find the coffee helps."

Yuffie found that she did not mind so much, so she unbuckled the Conformer's belt from across her chest and laid it gently down on the floor before sliding onto the chair. Her cheeks were still hot, and she rubbed them with the back of one hand, hoping he didn't see. "I'll take it with some sugar, thank you. You look tired, too. Long days in the office?"

She couldn't see his face with his back to her, but she swore that he stiffened. "It's nothing," he said. "I've not been sleeping well lately." He turned with a steaming mug in his hands that smelled wonderful, and she got up quickly, walking to him and taking it gratefully. She'd caught the first airship into Corel from the coast and hadn't had time to grab breakfast. Breakfast on the airship itself was out of the question, considering that she'd probably throw it all back up the moment she got it down. "How are affairs in Wutai? I believe I caught you up on everything happening here in the last letter, but you unfortunately had no time to write back."

"Nice way of putting it," she said, leaning back in her chair. She was itching to ask him about Nibelheim and Rude, but if there was one thing she'd learned from knowing Rufus Shinra for thirteen years long distance, it was that he took time to warm up to a topic. Pushing him would do no good. She'd known that when she called him three days ago, and winding up here in Corel was not what she'd had in mind. "Wutai is fine. We've finally finished fixing up the southern part of the city, the area destroyed in the war with Shinra. It used to be all slums and falling down rubble, but it looks nice now."

"I'm glad it's working out for you," Rufus said. "The war with Shinra...well. I'm trying to make it up to you as best as I can. My father could be quite brutal when he wanted to be."

"You've done us a world of good with your airships and publicity," Yuffie said, shrugging. "We've had another population boom recently, a bunch of expats moving back in from the Junon area. A lot of the old folks won't live in the new area still - some Wutaians are superstitious folk and are afraid of spirits of the war dead or some such thing. But most of the newcomers don't care that much. It's government subsidized housing and a sight cheaper than most of the old land."

"Do any of these expatriates have valid claim to their ancestor's property rights?"

"Some do," Yuffie acknowledged. "A lot of them have the old paperwork, stuff in the back of their great-great-great-grandfather's safes and things like that. Of course, most of it means nothing since that land was destroyed in the wars or they'd been gone so long the property rights reverted to my father, who sold it back to the town. But...we do as best as we can."

"Very interesting," Rufus mused. "You know, we could use you in Corel, lady. The property disputes here are something else."

Yuffie grunted and sipped her coffee. It burned her tongue. "Sorry, Shinra. You're on your own there. I've got my own little city-state to take care of."

He laughed again. "I know. And I'm sorry to have called you here when I know you're busy in Wutai."

Ah, Yuffie thought. Now he's ready to talk. "Apology accepted," she said. "At least, it will be once I know what you're beating around the bush about. Why am I here again?"

Rufus had been leaning against the edge of his desk, but now he straightened, pushing the chair back and standing. It pained her to see him leaning so heavily on the chair arm as he struggled to do so, all the while with a nonchalant expression that held just a hint of challenge, as if to say, _I dare anyone to tell me that I cannot do even this._

She didn't say anything. She simply watched as he hobbled to the picture window and leaned there against the wall, fingering the heavy drapes absently. The setting sun made a halo around his golden hair, and Yuffie blinked rapidly to clear the red-orange afterglow from her vision.

"I sent Rude to Nibelheim four days ago," he said. "It didn't go well."

--

Seven hours later, perched on the back of Reno's motorbike as they sped across the night-shrouded mountains toward Nibelheim, Yuffie wondered again at the strange circumstances that had brought her and Rufus Shinra and the rest of Green Earth together. It was almost like the giant manhunt that had occurred when Cloud had gone missing, a mobilization that had reminded her eerily of AVALANCHE after Cloud had been lost in the Lifestream after confronting Sephiroth at the Northern Crater. Everyone's emotions had been taut, the worry so palpable in the air that Yuffie had to fight back tears at night when she climbed into bed. She knew Tifa cried, and so she had vowed she would not, because she had to be strong for her friend.

In the end, Cloud had not been found, and life had gradually adjusted itself to a world without Cloud Strife, a world in which Tifa Lockhart went back to Edge and started dating Rude, a world in which Cid's wife left him to strike out on her own, a world in which Yuffie had lost touch with most of her old friends over the years. It was as if Cloud, hard as he had been to reach, had been the glue that had held them all together.

"I've been having dreams," Rufus had told her. "They're bits and pieces of things - Sephiroth, mostly, but sometimes other things, strange things. Sometimes I hear the Cetra girl speaking to me. Other times I am walking through the gates of some abandoned town, and I can feel something moving in the tunnels at the far end, though it's quiet."

Yuffie had shivered, though it was warm in Rufus' office. "Is this town...Nibelheim?"

"I sent Rude to Nibelheim," Rufus said, not denying her guess. "He was attacked. Luckily, he made it back to Costa del Sol and got help back to Corel. He gave me a cursory report." He'd turned back to her abruptly at that phrase, staring intently at her face as if trying to gauge her reaction. "He found Cloud Strife's star pendant at the entrance to a series of tunnels that used to be the building they called the Shinra Mansion."

"Used to?" Yuffie echoed, but Rufus dropped his gaze.

"I would like you to go to Nibelheim with Reno. I think whatever is in those tunnels is important. Reno can fill you in on the way."

Yuffie stared at him. "Now?"

When Rufus spoke, he sounded strained. "Please speak with Reno. I gave him orders to leave at his discretion."

"Rufus," Yuffie said, standing and gripping the Conformer tightly in one hand, as if the weapon's cold touch could give her strength. "How detailed exactly are these dreams?"

He had smiled tightly. "You don't want to know."

_Nibelheim's not there anymore_, Reno said, the first words out of his mouth after Yuffie had said hello and told him she was going with him. He hadn't looked too happy about the prospect, and if the situation hadn't been so serious, she would have probably taken the opportunity to make his life miserable for a few hours. It wasn't that she didn't like Reno - she did. The two of them were just too much alike. Talking to Reno was sometimes like talking to herself, and too much of that drove her crazy.

_What, it was burned down again?_

Reno's mouth had quirked. _I asked Rude the same thing. He said no. It's just not there._

It was as much information as either of them knew. Rude had been unable to describe the town in more detail than that, Reno said, and had told them to stay away from it. Cloud's star pendant was warm around Yuffie's neck, and she clutched it as the bike bumped over a particularly nasty ridge or perhaps tree root, praying that Reno's driving would get them there alive.

"It's not my driving you have to worry about on this trip, ma'am," Reno told her over one shoulder as if reading her mind. She rolled her eyes.

"I'm sorry I'm not Tifa Lockhart, but I'll have to do."

Reno jerked slightly and after a moment she realized that he was laughing. "Tifa had her reasons," he said. "Long as I have someone with me that can hit a target reasonably without getting killed, that's all I care about. Besides, Valentine's at Nibelheim already, or so I'm told."

She blinked in mild shock. "Vincent is? What? Why-?"

"We'll see when we get there, won't we?" He sounded harsh, the words forced. He must be worried, Yuffie realized. She wished she could ask him, _Is it Rude? Is it Vincent?_ She didn't think he had any filial feeling for Vincent, but the two of them had always gotten along professionally, if not personally, and Nibelheim being an unknown quantity was not something she'd wish on anyone. She'd heard enough of the nightmarish story from Cloud and Tifa, and didn't need to know any more.

Tifa...now there was someone they could sorely use right now. Except that Tifa had turned away after their initial greeting last night and said, "Yuffie, I can't stay. I'm going home."

Yuffie had understood, even if she didn't want to. It was more than Denzel being missing, a fact which she dismissed easily as Reeve being an overprotective father-type. Tifa was running again, running from Cloud and running from Rude. "Rude really does love you, you know," she had said.

The look in Tifa's eyes was almost unbearably sad. "I know. That's why I have to go."

She had almost told Tifa that she was making no sense at all, but it was useless. Tifa always made sense, because Tifa didn't ever want to say no to anyone, and this time when she did have the guts to say no, Yuffie wasn't going to be the one to call her on it. "Okay," she said instead. "I hope things work out with Denzel. I think Reeve is worried over nothing."

Tifa had given her a tight smile. "Let's hope."

It was only after the other woman had gone that Yuffie had realized that it was the first time she'd seen Tifa in almost eight years.

"What's up?" Reno said.

Yuffie blinked, roused from her stupor. "Huh?"

"You went stiff all of a sudden. You're not going chicken on me, are ya?"

She debated a few answers and settled with, "I'm worried about Tifa."

To his credit, he didn't laugh it off. "I know," he said simply, and she rolled those words around in her head, considering them and finding them acceptable. Anyone who thought that Reno was a blabbermouth surely didn't know him, because the man was a genius at picking and choosing his words. Reno talked, but he never talked carelessly.

"Thanks," she told him, and he shrugged against her as the wind roared by.

"Not much either of us can do now about it. Tifa's gotta figure out stuff by herself. How'd your talk with the boss man go?"

Rufus' face, still proud and golden even as he hobbled towards her with his cane and his crippled foot, flashed into her memory. "Fine," she said. "He gave me the short version of the story. Whatever's in those tunnels is important, he says. Funny, I'd have liked to get the long version of this before heading out on some assignment where I might be killed."

Reno snorted. "There's not much to the longer version. Rufus keeps to himself most of these days, and I couldn't wean much more out of him. Once he heard that Valentine had gone ahead of us, he told me to hurry and catch up, and Valentine would explain everything."

"He's right, you know," Yuffie said.

"What?"

"Vincent's smart. He'll figure out what's going on."

A heave of the shoulders meant that Reno sighed, a sound lost on the wind. "I hope you're right. Cause at this point I don't think even Rufus has much to go on."

Dreams, thought Yuffie, and Reno shifted gears. The motorcycle's roar dulled to a hum, the metal purring between her knees and the motor dropping as they coasted to a stop between two arching mountain peaks, black in the distance against the starry sky. The moon was hidden behind a bank of clouds.

"Now what?" she asked, and Reno turned the key in the ignition. Everything went very still. There should have been some sort of night sounds - insects, birds, the rustling of things in the undergrowth that tickled Yuffie's exposed knees and legs above her boots - but she could hear nothing. She shivered.

"Now," Reno said, "we walk."

They moved silently and swiftly through the thick underbrush, too thick for the normal growth surrounding a town. Weeds twisted in treacherous thorny tangles under their feet, and Yuffie caught herself from falling once or twice by sheer luck and quick reflexes. There was no need to say it - she could see that Reno felt it too, that ominous foreboding that lingered in the air like invisible smoke. She recognized the area by the distance of the mountains, and there should have been lights and the sound of people and smoke from fireplaces and chimneys. But it was dark and still.

"What's that?" she hissed suddenly, and Reno turned as she pointed up to their left at a dark shadow looming out of the undergrowth. He made a signal and they tracked toward it, halting as the object resolved into sharp planes and angles and the shining metal of a propeller.

"Valentine's plane," Reno whispered close to her ear, and she nodded. It was the airplane Vincent had taken into Nibelheim, but a quick look revealed that he was not inside or anywhere in the vicinity.

They backtracked to the trail, which had now become a muddy, barely visible path between the weeds. If this had been Nibelheim's main road, then they surely should be entering the town by now, but she could see nothing except the surrounding weeds and taller scraggly trees and mountains.

Reno's hand on her shoulder stopped her in her tracks. But even as he moved his hand away, her tracker's skills screamed at her and she whipped around to the right, where the enormous maw of a cave opened, yawning and black, behind the rusted remains of an iron fence.

Something moved there.

Reno was already running past the old gate opening, stumbling over unseen brambles and debris, falling to his knees. Yuffie did not need to run, moving slowly and carefully like an old woman in Reno's footsteps, wobbling to the spot where the cloak-swathed figure of Vincent Valentine lay sprawled on the ground, one hand clutching his bloodstained side, the other wrapped tightly around him as if warding off something.

"You idiot!" Reno hissed, and Vincent raised his head.

"I was afraid you were not going to come."

"Vincent," Yuffie said hollowly. "Vince. Is it bad? Are you bleeding?"

In the dim light of the moon she couldn't tell that his eyes were different from any other man's - glinting darkly, face carefully neutral against the terrible pain she knew he must be feeling right now. She stumbled to Reno's side, grabbed the red-haired man's shoulder for support. Reno did not move away.

"I'll live," Vincent said softly. "More importantly, the thing in that cave will not bother anyone again. I have taken care of it. Please get me back to my plane."

"You're crazy!"

He looked at her and she could almost swear his lips were curved in a smile. "Yuffie, I'm fine. I've suffered much worse and survived."

"Lady Kisaragi," Reno said abruptly, twisting his head around to regard her with a flat stare. She shivered. He'd never called her that before, not seriously. "Please escort Mr. Valentine to his ship. I will return to Corel on the motorcycle."

She opened her mouth to protest wildly, that she couldn't let Reno navigate through the dark mountains alone, that she always got sick during air travel, and then shut it again. Vincent was injured, and someone needed to fly that plane.

Yuffie Kisaragi was still a fighter.

"Let's go, Vincent," she said, letting go of Reno's shoulder. Her legs felt steady now, like stone pillars, as she reached down and helped the injured man gently to his feet. She'd forgotten how heavy he was, and as he leaned on her she willed her stone-strong legs to stay that way, not to collapse into the puddles of terrified goo that they had been moments earlier. Her friends needed her, and damned if she was going to fall apart now. The blood from Vincent's cloak seeped into the side of her shirt, still warm and damp.

She was about to steer him back through the ruined iron fence in the direction of the parked ship when Vincent shook his head and stopped. She looked back up at him, then looked at Reno, who had made as if to follow them with an odd, frozen look on his face.

"Vince?" she said. Her voice trembled.

With an effort, Vincent extended his free arm, the human one that was not slung across Yuffie's shoulders like an enormously heavy metal sling. The moon came out behind the clouds fully then. She stared, sickly fascinated, at the spiderweb of red and blue and black patches that crawled up the skin of his arm, at the pale blisters breaking the skin's surface, recognizing that they were Geostigma symptoms in their advanced stage, even more than that, because she'd never seen anyone with those terrible, oozing blisters before.

"Please take this," Vincent said, and something heavy and cold and familiar landed in her palm. She wrenched her gaze away from his dying arm and to the thing in her hand, a very small, very solid, and very ordinary red Summon Materia.


	10. Chapter 9: Reno

_IX. Reno_

"So now we have two people in the hospital, one kid assumed missing, Cloud Strife sightings in Nibelheim, Rufus having nightmares, and Lockhart - your fiancee, who you're supposed to be keeping tabs on, by the way!! - gone off with my motorcycle to do who knows where. Could it get any worse?! Don't answer that."

Rude looked up at Reno from his bed, where he was eating breakfast on a tray. "Don't rant at me like that, Reno. I'll be fine in a few days. See? I can move my arm now."

"Idiot," Reno said, pacing again, from the door to the window to the door and back. His head was throbbing. He hadn't slept all night, sitting outside the operation room with Yuffie, who had been clutching that damn Materia and not saying a word. Around dawn, as the sun came up over the Corel mountains, someone had come out of the operating room and said that Vincent was going to be fine, but that didn't make Reno feel any better. "You're goddamn stupid, that's what it is."

"You're upset about Vincent. Don't take it out on me."

"He won't _talk_. He won't say anything - not to me, not to Yuffie, not to Rufus. Damn, first the man races off to Nibelheim by himself, then he tells us that he's killed whatever was in that cave and doesn't tell us how, and then he gives Yuffie his Materia and won't tell us why! I'm sick and tired of being pushed aside, and if it's going to be like this from now on, I quit!"

Rude pushed himself up weakly from the bed and frowned at Reno. "Really," he said flatly.

Reno stalked to the window and banged his head against the bullet-proof windowpane. "No," he muttered. "No, not really."

"I didn't think so."

"Sometimes I wish I hadn't taken that goddamn oath."

"You swore an oath to Shinra," Rude reminded him, spearing a potato wedge. "Not to Green Earth, not to Rufus, not to me. If you want to leave, nothing's stopping you."

Reno faced him with a challenging look. "You really believe that?"

"I'd like to," Rude said. "Just the same as you'd like to."

"Yeah," Reno said. "Sometimes I wish you would stop reading my mind."

Rude gave him a shadowy smile. "I've worked with you for more than twenty years, you know. It happens." He lay down again, placing the empty breakfast tray on the nightstand. "As for Tifa, I don't know where she's gone, but I trust her. I believe that she's headed back to Midgar. You'll probably find your bike at the Costa del Sol port."

"I hate women," Reno said.

"Really?"

A pause. "No. Not really. But I will soon if Yuffie doesn't hand over that Materia and let me look at it."

"If you stopped treating her like a little kid, maybe she might."

He almost snapped that Yuffie was a little kid, but again Rude knew him too well. It had been odd seeing her again after all these years. How many had it been? Seven? Eight? He'd lost count. He'd expected the same snotty little brat with a Materia obsession that was unreal, a Wutaian kid with double the warped sense of duty and responsibility that all Wutaians seemed to have, a girl play-acting at being a lady. Instead he'd found a woman who could hold her own. She'd actually listened to what he'd had to say last night, had followed his directions without a fuss, had gamely swallowed her aversion to flying to bring Vincent Valentine back alive. She'd been honorable, and he'd been there playacting at being a leader, because he had honestly no clue what to do when confronted by Vincent's horrible, pain-twisted face there in the moonlight.

Lady Kisaragi, he'd called her, and last night her determination and courage had shone through her fear. He wondered what he'd looked like. He should have been the one getting Vincent back to his jet, or at least gone round the entrance of that cave to see what else he could find. But instead he'd run out of there after them with the fear at his heels, gunned the engine of that motorcycle all the way to Corel, not daring to look behind him because he hadn't wanted to see if something was following him.

"There was something in that cave," Reno said. "You were right."

"Glad to hear it." Rude's tone was dryly amused. "I am right on occasion, you know."

"I've never felt so..." He stopped. "Afraid. Not before I joined the Turks, not in all those years I've been with Shinra."

"It was bad," Rude acknowledged softly. "Like something tainted had been there."

The memory awoke at Rude's words, and he realized that he had been mistaken and shivered, wrapping both arms around himself. "No, wait a second. You remember? I'd just gotten out of surgery after Sector 7 collapsed, Tseng'd moved me back into the headquarters, and I woke up that night hearing all kinds of running around. I dragged myself out of bed-"

"With that wound?" Rude demanded. "No wonder you were incapacitated for the next three weeks!"

"-and went into the hallway, and...I've never seen so much blood, Rude. Blood all over the carpet, on the stairs, on the walls...it smelled like dead things."

Behind him, Rude suddenly went still. "I remember," he said.

"My vision was blurry, I couldn't hardly see. I stumbled over something, realized they were bodies. When I bent down to look at the wounds, it was obvious who did it. There wasn't anyone else in all the world, I bet, who cut like that. They'd been speared clean all the way through the heart...they were still bleeding. The blood was warm."

"Sephiroth's dead," Rude interjected harshly. "I haven't seen any bodies. Have you?"

"He damn well better be dead," Reno said, "cause with Cloud gone...I don't know if any of us are strong enough to face him now."

--

He went down to see Yuffie after that, his hands still shaking, his pulse racing from the memories of the blood on the walls of the Shinra building after Sephiroth's rampage. It wasn't the same, he told himself - it was fifteen years ago, and they were past that now. Hojo's creations were all gone, and there was no one out there to trouble them.

Except that the picture of Vincent's arm, flesh blackened with Geostigma, nagged at the corner of his mind and refused to go away.

"Reno? You okay?"

He'd stumbled into the hospital waiting area without realizing it, and Yuffie had risen from her chair with a worried look on her face, that pretty face which he still couldn't quite get used to because she didn't look like a little girl any more. Thankfully, she'd put away the Conformer. He didn't think he could deal with anyone brandishing a weapon at him at the moment. "I'm fine," he told her shortly. "What's the status?"

"Vincent's resting." She eyed him. "You wanna see him?"

He almost nodded, thought better of it, then shook his head. "I'll let him sleep."

"Speaking of sleep..." she trailed off meaningfully, and the thought flittered briefly through his mind that he'd had six hours of sleep in almost three days. But he was a Turk, and he'd functioned with less before.

"Let me see that Materia," he said.

Her face set in a stubborn frown. "Why should I?"

"Because it might be important. It's a clue, and we need clues."

"I put it in the Conformer," she said. "Which is in my room, with the door locked. And Vince didn't say anything about a clue. What makes you think that?"

"Why else would he have given it to you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know."

Reno's fingers twitched. "Look here, I don't know who you think you are, but if you're content just to stand there and let Cloud's death mean nothing, then go right ahead!"

A wave of emotion swept across Yuffie's face fleetingly, but a wave so strong that at once he wished he hadn't said that. "If you were truly Cloud's friend," she told him quietly, "You wouldn't ever dare say those words."

She stalked off, leaving him standing there feeling drained and empty, facing the rows of plastic chairs that lined the walls of the room. "I think I'm losing it," he informed the wall.

"Don't say that just yet," said someone behind him, and he spun around to see Tseng standing there with his arms crossed, staring challengingly at him.

"Hey," Reno said, too tired to think of a proper greeting. Then again, Tseng was no longer his boss, so it was all right. "What's happening?"

"Rude is resting," Tseng returned. "Vincent is resting. I think it's time you should be resting too."

"Nice try, but I don't work for you anymore."

"I'm not saying this as a boss, Reno. I'm saying this as a friend. You look terrible."

"I slept almost two hours last night," he said defensively. "While Valentine was in the operation room."

Tseng smiled at that. "Come with me, Reno."

With a questioning look, he followed his former leader out of the hospital, back down to the main street of Corel and into the hot desert sun of early afternoon. Cars rumbled up and down the cobblestoned drive, and the wide sidewalks bustled with pedestrians going about their business. Those who glanced up from their conversations to look curiously at them were met with Reno's blank stare, his dirt- and sweat-encrusted clothes.

Tseng did not seem to mind, smiling politely at passersby or greeting them with a friendly wave and a few by name. They all seemed to like him. Tseng had always had that way about him, though, like a real ladies' man though Reno didn't think he'd ever known the former Turk leader to have a girlfriend. Elena'd had a brief crush on him and they'd gone out on a few dates, but ultimately they hadn't worked out. Just like Reno's relationships, all fizzling out one way or the other. He had never cared enough to wonder why. There was always work to keep him busy, and alcohol, and exercise, and a dozen other things.

Yuffie's face surfaced in his mind again and he pushed her memory away irritably as they reached the gates of the Green Earth headquarters. Fine, he'd been a lousy example of a leader last night, and Yuffie, as always, hadn't been hesitant to let him know that a moment ago. But that was one mission out of a thousand, and that in itself meant nothing. Neither did the half-baked opinion of a former ninja girl.

"Reno."

He snapped to attention automatically, then blinked and relaxed as he realized that Tseng had stopped walking and was gazing at him quizzically. They were standing at an intersection a block and a half away from the headquarters. The light was red. Cars rumbled by. He felt lightheaded.

"You're drifting," Tseng said.

He rubbed his eyes. "Sorry. I'll get some sleep in a little bit. Got a lot to think about."

They were silent up to Tseng's office, where Reno sank into the chair in front of the desk and propped his feet up on the stool next to it. Tseng switched off the humming radio and remained standing, staring down at him solemnly.

"What?" Reno demanded, twitching.

"Please tell me what happened."

He supposed there was no harm in that. Tseng was concerned about his wellbeing, as always, like a father worried about his favorite son, and Reno had for some reason always been the favorite son. It was as if Tseng didn't quite trust him to take care of himself. Sometimes it made him angry, but mostly it had been good because it made him push himself to the limit, just to prove that he could do it. So he sat there slouched in Tseng's chair in his dirty clothes and told the story in an abbreviated fashion of what he and Yuffie Kisaragi had found last night, and Tseng sat and listened without comment.

"If I hadn't sent Vincent," he said at last, "None of this would have happened."

Reno shrugged. "No. Instead, me or Rude or Highwind or somebody else here at Green Earth woulda gone out there to Niebelheim under Rufus' orders and gotten killed. You gotta admit Vincent Valentine's got things going for him that the rest of us mere humans don't have."

Tseng gave him a tight smile. "There is that. I called him for that very reason. It doesn't stop me from feeling guilty about it."

"I think," Reno said, "that both of us should stop feeling guilty for things that we can't help."

Tseng laughed. "Is that so?"

"That's so."

There was silence again, and then Tseng said, "Well if that's the case, then I'd like you to get that Materia from Yuffie Kisaragi."

"I've been trying all day," Reno growled. "She won't let me get near it. Not even for Rufus, and I know she and Rufus are in tight with each other."

His former boss began pacing abruptly, a slower, more methodical version of what Reno had been doing this morning in Rude's hospital room. "Did you see it?"

"It was red," Reno deadpanned. "It looked normal. It was dark, but from what I could see of the thing, it looked like any regular Summon Materia. I don't see why she'd want to hide it from the world. Sure, Materia these days go for sky-high prices on the black market, but I don't think even Yuffie'd stoop so low."

"Reno, your diplomatic skills are a bit lacking, you know."

"I don't need you of all people reminding me now."

Tseng turned back to him abruptly, his gaze hard. "I need you to understand this. Out of all of us, I'd expect you to be the one Yuffie would have the most confidence entrusting that Materia to. You were there with her last night. I certainly wouldn't have any luck with her, and she and Rufus are long-distance acquaintances at best. Tifa Lockhart would be useful if she was here, but she's not. She doesn't even know Elena, and I don't want to involve anyone else if I can help it."

Reno narrowed his eyes. " Why are you so bent on getting that Materia, anyway?"

"It's a clue," Tseng said. "We need everything we can get."

"Tseng-"

"You don't have to trust me," Tseng said softly. "Rufus has his own reasons, and I'm sorry I can't explain everything at the moment. But that Materia is very important."

Reno pushed himself up from the stuffed chair, feeling his tired muscles creak. "Look. I'll try. I'll be nicer to Yuffie. We're all tired. I'm gonna go take a nap and then try again. Give me some time."

"I didn't mean to sound like I'm giving you orders," Tseng said as Reno reached the door. "We're equals now."

"Yeah," Reno said sardonically. "For two people who are equals, you sure spend a lot of time telling me what to do."

He left the room at that, closing the door behind him but being careful not to slam it, because damned if he was going to show Tseng his temper again. Tseng and half of Green Earth already thought he was a sizzling rocket about to explode at all times. He supposed that had been true of late more often than not, but there was something in the air these past few months, a tingling that he could just barely make out with his dormant combat sense that reminded him of back then when they were chasing Sephiroth all over the world. It wasn't something he liked to think about, so he didn't. But the feeling was always there.

He left the main building, debated going home for a brief moment and decided against it. Home was a tiny flat on the second floor of one of Corel's newer housing units on the far side of town. In this state, he'd probably be run down by someone's car before he got there. Instead, he headed over to building 6, the inn that housed visiting employees, absentmindedly pressing the elevator button and getting in.

It took him a few seconds to realize that Yuffie was in the elevator with him.

"Earth to Reno," she teased. He had expected her to be angry with him about the Materia incident, but she was grinning instead, though the bags under her eyes belied her spry expression.

"I'm tired," he grunted, and then remembered his promise to Tseng and sighed. "Sorry. Long day."

"I hear ya," she said, and shrugged fluidly. "I know what you mean. Going to get some sleep?"

"I figure I'll crash on the couch down in the basement lounge or something. A few hours should be fine."

She seemed to be weighing something in her mind and then said, "If you want, you can crash on the bed in my guest room instead. I'm going out for a bit and won't need it."

He focused on her face for the first time since this whole ordeal began, trying to judge if she was being serious or not. It was always hard to tell with Yuffie Kisaragi; one minute she would be trying to save his life, the next minute she'd be playing a practical joke on him. But she looked serious this time, and for some reason the thought went through his mind again that she had grown up, filled out with the figure of a woman. She'd never be gracefully beautiful like Tifa Lockhart, but the former ninja was no longer all gangly awkwardness and childish glee.

"You grew your hair out," Reno said suddenly.

She frowned. "Well, yeah. I've been growing it out the past eight years or so, since-" A pause. Reno struggled to think through the fatigue, something important that had happened eight years ago, something terrible. Cloud. "Um, what does that have to do with you needing sleep?"

"Sorry," he said. "Nothing. Are you for real, or is this one of your tricks again?"

"I feel sorry for you," she told him imperiously. "You look like someone's Chocobo ran you over forwards and backwards and then some."

He winced. She still had that way with words. "I'm tired. Not dead. A nap and I'll be just fine."

Yuffie shrugged again, eyeing him with a look that said, you're crazy. "Well, suit yourself," she said. "No skin off my back either way, you know."

This was true. "Sure," he said then. "Why not? I'll take the offer."

"Fourth floor, then." She jabbed a button on the lighted panel and the elevator creaked back upward.

Reno wondered if this was a good time to bring up the fact that he needed her to give him the Materia. Then the thought struck him that if he was going to be alone in her quarters with her out doing who knows what, all he'd have to do was find the Conformer and remove the Materia from the weapon. So he said nothing as the elevator pinged and the doors slid open. Building 6's bland, carpeted hallway met his gaze, the walls neatly set with numbered doors at regular intervals.

"I only got one key," Yuffie said, motioning him to the left. "So if you leave, you can't get back in. Tough luck if that happens."

"I got the message," he grumbled, feeling testy again. "You know, if you're going to be snotty about it, I'll go sleep somewhere else."

"We're here," Yuffie said, ignoring him. She produced an electronic key, waving it in front of the sensor lock, and the door clicked and swung open silently.

Reno had never been in one of Building 6's guestrooms before, and he was surprised to find that though Yuffie's room was small, as he had thought, it was well furnished. The floors were bare hardwood, a little scuffed and scraped, but the furniture was solid with a big bed at the far end of the room and a sofa against the right wall. There was a small kitchenette area adjoining the main room, where one could make coffee or scramble eggs for breakfast.

"This is pretty nice," he said.

Yuffie jerked her head at him to come in. "It's decent. I'm leaving Corel tomorrow in any case. Gotta get back to the real world."

Her tone irritated him. "Then what is this?" he countered. "Valentine doesn't mean anything to you?"

She stiffened. "Vince can take care of himself," she said coldly. "This isn't my fight, Reno. I've seen what I want to see, and for the moment I don't want any part of it. I paid my respects to Rufus this morning after I made sure Vincent was all right, and he understands. I've got my own life."

"Yeah," Reno said sardonically, "Thanks for being so noble about it."

"You're welcome," she snapped. "Is that all? I got places to be."

"For someone who's so intent on leaving Corel, you've sure got a lot of appointments in town."

"And what's it to you?"

Reno went to the couch and made a great show of pulling off his boots, though it was a relief to be able to flex his toes again after sleeping in the damn things for three days. "Well, I just figure if you're going to wash your hands of this business, what's the harm of handing over that Materia to us so we can look at it?"

"I knew you were going to say that," she said. "The answer is no. And no. And also no."

He got to his feet, trying to stay calm, knowing it wasn't working. "Damn, woman. What good is that Materia going to be to you? You don't need it!"

"You can't have it," she said again, and he glanced around the room, saw the wrapped shape of the Conformer leaning against the wall next to the bed. It was now or never, he decided, and made a lunge for it.

As he expected, she'd seen what he was going to do and dove across the room for her weapon, banging into the wall with a loud whumph, blocking the giant shuriken as he slammed into the wall with his hands. He barely missed her head and crash-landed into the wall with both arms outspread, one on either side of her. She didn't flinch.

If he'd had more sleep, perhaps he would have been faster. But Reno had had six hours of sleep in two days, sleep filled with nightmares about Geostigma, about the invisible monster that had taken down both his best friend and the ex-Turk who he had always thought invincible. Nothing was sacred any more.

He had been Tseng's golden child. But if Rude and Vincent hadn't been able to stop it, what good could he do?

"Yuffie," he said. "Lady Kisaragi." Her eyes wavered at the formal title, and he pushed on, sounding desperate and not caring. "Please. Let me have it. Or, at least tell me why it's so important."

"I can't," she ground out. "And I changed my mind. I think you should leave now."

She sounded so infuriatingly calm, her dark eyes flashing fire at the same time. Reno clenched his hands into fists against the wall, trying to think of something, anything, that might make her listen to him, and then he did the last thing in the world that both of them expected.

He leaned down and kissed her.


	11. Chapter 10: Vincent

_X. Vincent_

When he woke up, the sun was slanting through the blinds of his hospital room, and the wound in his side was throbbing. There was a white-capped nurse in the room with him, transcribing readings from what looked like an advanced vital-signs machine.

He cleared his throat softly. "I'm thirsty," he said. "I would like some water, please."

She jumped, eyes going wide as she glanced to the machine and back. Vincent felt vaguely regretful for scaring her, but there wasn't much he could do about the fact that his vital signs usually stayed the same whether he was asleep or awake. Hojo had done his damage, and there was nothing anyone could do about that now. He opened his mouth to reassure the woman again, but she was already scurrying through the door. A minute later someone returned with a glass of water, but it was a male doctor. Vincent recognized the tall, bearded man - one of the doctors that had been hired on staff at the opening of the Corel hospital almost ten years ago. He didn't know his name.

"Mr. Valentine," the doctor greeted him. "I'm glad to see you're doing better."

"I believe I frightened one of your employees," Vincent said, accepting the water with his good hand and a slight nod. He ran a mental checklist of each body part. Nothing seemed to be hurting with more than a dull throb. His side, he noticed had been swathed and bandaged, as had his wrist and his left knee.

The doctor smiled. "Nurse Vitta is new. Though in your case, that's not much of an excuse, I know."

"Reno and Yuffie," he said. "Rufus Shinra's bodyguard and the lady of Wutai. Are they safe?"

The doctor took the glass of water, now empty, and set it on the desk by the bed. "They were the ones who brought you in. I believe they stayed the night waiting for your surgery results. As for where they are now, I don't know. They left the hospital as soon as I told them you would be all right."

Vincent smiled slightly. "They shouldn't have worried. It takes more than that to kill me."

The doctor frowned. "I won't go as far as asking what the 'that' was that you're referring to. But I strongly advise you against tangling with anymore of whatever it was in the future. It's not good for your health."

"Don't worry," Vincent said. "Hopefully, there was just one, and I have...exterminated it."

The doctor left shortly, taking the water with him and promising some sort of meal soon. Vincent was not particularly hungry, but it was a gesture of goodwill and he accepted it as such. He wished for a moment that Yuffie could be found, but there was no communication device in his room and she most likely needed her rest after the ordeal last night.

He had been surprised at the skill with which she'd handled the plane. Granted, she had not been much more than shakingly amateur, but she had taken off and landed the aircraft admirably, and Cid Highwind had been too worried about Vincent to scold her for skidding one wingtip sideways onto the runway as she had touched down back in Corel. He mulled over the memory of her face, taut with worry and fear, valiantly steering the aircraft down through the clouds back into the safety of the town, and wondered if he had been right to tell her what he had seen and to give her that Materia.

He would tell Yuffie and Rufus, he decided, and no one else. Yuffie he had always felt like he could trust, and he had needed to tell someone last night, had to let the vivid images out from between Chaos' raging voice in his head. Under normal circumstances, he would not have even thought of letting Rufus Shinra know what he had discovered. But it was Rufus to whom the dreams came, Rufus who had first been alerted to Nibelheim's fate, and for some reason, Rufus had been chosen to be part of this new game.

So Vincent would tell him everything. He had no choice, he had decided, if they all wanted to survive.

"Mr. Valentine. And what trouble have you gotten into this time?"

He glanced up, not too surprised to see Rufus Shinra there in the doorway, leaning on that bright, flashy chrome cane with a bemused smile on a face that looked otherwise drawn and tired. "I wasn't expecting you until later," Vincent said.

Rufus limped into the room. "It is later. Almost time for dinner. I'd ask you to join me, but...circumstances prevent that, unfortunately." He cast a critical glance at Vincent's bandaged side.

"I can eat," Vincent told him calmly. "It's not as bad as it looks." He looked out the window and realized the sunlight was the ruddy sunlight of evening. "I forgot the sun sets later in Corel. What time is it?"

"Almost eight o' clock, evening. You were out of surgery at dawn, Yuffie tells me, so you've been asleep for a while. How are you feeling?"

"Speaking literally," Vincent said, "I've obviously been worse. Speaking otherwise-" he raised his arm slightly and glanced at the blackened, blistered flesh that crawled above his bandaged wrist. "You could say I've been better."

Rufus made a slight hissing sound at the sight, and he said, "It's worse than Reno had me believe."

Vincent put down his arm. "It's been getting worse these few days. Strange, because the progression of the disease was quite steady before that."

"You mean," Rufus said, "that you think something is accelerating it since you came to Corel."

Vincent met his gaze steadily. "Yes."

Rufus shuffled slowly to the window, leaning his cane against the wall and carefully opening the blinds. Vincent watched him for a moment, then gazed instead out below at the bustling main street of Corel, the muted sound of rumbling cars and patchy vegetation on the cliffs above.

"Tell me what happened."

If he'd had time to rehearse his story, perhaps Vincent would have had some sort of plan of attack, because relaying an account of a battle unprepared was much like rushing into that battle unprepared. And to do that to Rufus Shinra was not something he was comfortable with. "I must confess that I wasn't expecting you to visit so soon," he said. "I'm not quite sure I have the details correct."

"You had them correct for Yuffie," Rufus said abruptly.

There was something strange in the other man's voice when he mentioned Yuffie's name, but Vincent couldn't quite catch the exact tone. He had never been much of a reader of emotions, though he knew that Rufus and Yuffie had grown close in the past ten years in a friendship that he didn't quite understand. But it wasn't his place to say, so he had kept an eye on Yuffie and been silent, listening to her talk when she wanted to talk. Yuffie was like that.

"I told Yuffie because I had to. I would have told Reno if he had been in the airplane with me on the way back. I did not choose her specifically."

"I don't quite believe you," Rufus said, and Vincent smiled slightly.

"Believe what you want, then."

"Vincent-"

"I'm not hiding anything from you," Vincent said sharply, and Rufus' eyes flew to his face at that, narrowing. "I will admit that I still don't quite trust you after all these years, as most of the old members of AVALANCHE don't trust you. But even I will admit that times are changing, and with the circumstances of this last week and how you have been a key player in them, I would be a fool to withhold information from you. It's not a case of you versus Yuffie, or Yuffie versus Reno, or you versus anyone else. That's child's play, and I like to think we're well beyond that."

Rufus turned away again, and after a moment, he said, "Yuffie left."

It took a moment for that to process. "Gone back to Wutai?"

The blond man nodded, one sharp motion up and down. "I tried to convince her to stay - I told her that especially after what happened to you...but she wouldn't hear of it. She left half an hour ago."

There was that strange quality in Rufus' voice again - not anger, not frustration, but something else, a slight longing, maybe, or even something more subtle than that. "Don't take it too hard," he said at last. "Yuffie was always impulsive."

Rufus laughed, but the sound was hard. "I have very few friends in this world, Vincent. I would have liked it if she had stayed."

"Cloud Strife," Vincent said, deciding that a change of subject would be a good thing. "How well did you know him?"

Rufus frowned at him. "Not well enough. I asked him to join Green Earth several times. He refused, as I thought he would. Yuffie wrote of him sometimes, passing mentions of visits. I admired him. Why are you asking?"

"Did Yuffie mention anything about the Materia I gave her?"

"In passing. Nothing about what it was. She told me that it wasn't her story to tell, and to ask you. Which is why I'm here now."

Vincent did some rapid calculating. Yuffie, Rufus said, had left half an hour ago. Logical reasoning would then mean that Rufus had seen her off, then come immediately to the hospital from the airport. He wondered if there was a way to put this delicately, decided that there wasn't. "If you try anything...unbecoming...towards Yuffie," he said quietly, "you do realize you have all the rest of the members of AVALANCHE to deal with. I would be careful, if I were you."

Rufus' hand twitched slightly. "I am a busy man, Mr. Valentine. I assure you that romance isn't a priority at the moment. And as I said, Yuffie Kisaragi and I are merely old friends."

Vincent shrugged and flexed his metal hand once or twice. "I asked about Cloud Strife because there is a link between him and that Materia that Yuffie has now safely tucked away in her Conformer." Before Rufus could say anything, Vincent plowed on. "More precisely, that Materia is Cloud's Materia."

Rufus sucked in a sharp breath. "You mean that Cloud is alive?"

"No," Vincent said. "I mean that the Materia that I gave Yuffie contains all that is left of Cloud Strife."

Silence. Below, cars rumbled past the intersection, horns honking. The sun hung low and red in the sky, and he suddenly thought of Meteor, hanging red and ominous in the sky so long ago. Memories were funny things.

Rufus' cane fell to the floor with a metallic clang. The silence shattered.

"I don't understand," Rufus said.

Vincent leaned back against the flimsy headboard of the bed, and thought of that long, cold night that he had passed slumped against the ground outside the ruins of Nibelheim, hoping that someone, anyone, would be able to help him because he had lost too much blood and could not help himself. It had been almost funny, he had mused as he lay there drowsing through the pain, that the immortal one would be the first to die.

No, not the first. The second.

"I went to Nibelheim because I wanted to see for myself what Rude had described to me. He didn't tell me much more than he told you or Reno, and that worried me. For some reason, I can't remember much of the actual town, other than the fact that it is not there. There are some remnants of civilization - I remember seeing some crumbling walls, a fence or two before the sun set. The roads are gone."

"Yes," Rufus said. His voice was strained, flat. "I heard from Rude."

Vincent smiled grimly. "Rude might have exaggerated. Or perhaps he didn't want to give you the whole truth. Turks never do, you know. We have our own secrets."

Rufus did not smile. "Go on."

"There were bodies. Most of them were just bones - the flesh was long gone, but not long ago enough. There's a look to old bones that these didn't have. These were fresh. I'd say in the last two years or so, long enough for the bodies themselves to decompose, long enough for vegetation to have overgrown what was left of the town. What's strange is that if the town had been destroyed two years ago, certainly someone would have reported it."

"Rude said it had not been burned down."

"It wasn't," Vincent said. He paused, wondering how to word it appropriately. "I remember when Weapon attacked Junon, and I had wondered, back then, what would have happened if the cannon had missed and Junon had been hit. I think perhaps it would have looked something like Nibelheim."

Rufus' hands twitched slightly, as if he wanted to curl them into fists and was resisting the compulsion. "Go on," he said again.

"I went towards the edge of the town, where the old building used to be that was commonly named the Shinra Mansion." He cast a significant look at Rufus. "You would know that place."

"Yes," Rufus said, not elaborating.

"It was no longer there, as expected. Instead, there was a cave. As Rude had done, I went inside, fully expecting whatever it was that attacked him to attack me."

Rufus waited, and then when Vincent didn't continue, he prompted. "And it didn't."

Vincent gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. "No. I had...called my...demons, had them at the ready. Perhaps whatever it was sensed this and kept its distance. I continued into the cave hoping to find some sort of clue, and then I realized that the tunnel was sloping downward. At a certain point the rock ended in rubble, and then abruptly became a set of old stairs."

Rufus drew a breath. "The stairs to the basement."

"Correct. I decided to tempt fate and continue down to the basement to see if any of the books had survived. I was just at the foot of the stairs when I was attacked. Unfortunately I don't remember much of the events past that, because at that point Chaos took over my body and my memories, and Chaos has a... consciousness all his own." Vincent paused again. "When I returned to myself-"

Rufus leaned forward, those bright blue eyes intense like burning stars. "You chased the monster up through the tunnels," he said, "where you ended up at the cave mouth and managed to cripple it."

Vincent frowned. He hadn't told that to Yuffie, only what happened after the battle. "Yes. How do you know this?"

"I've dreamed it," Rufus told him grimly. "I've dreamed it every night for the past four months. Two monsters locked in combat, both dark, both winged, except that one-" he cast a significant look at Vincent, "-has bright red eyes, and the other...its eyes are bright green-silver."

"Mako eyes," Vincent said.

Rufus took a deep, shuddering breath, and Vincent watched the elegant face spasm, then regain control forcefully, smoothing out into the facade of authority that Rufus Shinra worked so hard to keep and which even this recurring living nightmare couldn't shatter. "Yes," Rufus said. "Mako eyes."

They were both silent for a long while, or at least to Vincent it seemed a long while. There were no clocks in the room. He usually needed none; the passage of time was irrelevant to him. The sun rose and the sun set, and days moved into weeks and into months, then years, and nothing changed. In a way, he was almost perversely glad for this new strain of Geostigma that had chosen him as host, to jolt him into remembering how fleeting life really was.

"When did you know it was Cloud Strife?"

Vincent did not stir at the sound of Rufus' voice breaking the brittle silence; instead, he looked down at his metal hand laying limply on the bedspread, like the shriveled copper exoskeleton of some insect. "I have no factual evidence," he said simply. "But I knew, I think, before Rude told me what he had seen, before I borrowed that aircraft from Cid Highwind, before I set foot in that cave." He lifted the sleeve over his infected arm again, then let it drop with a soft sigh. "You're not the only one who has been dreaming, Rufus."

Another brittle silence. "How long have you had these dreams?" Rufus demanded.

"A week, perhaps," Vincent said. "They started just before I talked to Tseng and then rescued Rude and Reno from Costa del Sol. It was enough that I knew what had to be done, after Tseng gave me the basics. I used the morph command out of a last resort, actually. I had crippled the creature, but I didn't want to kill it, and I think that in itself was a sentiment strong enough for Chaos to hold back on slaying it outright. I had no idea that it would morph into a Materia."

Rufus had clasped his hands behind his back, standing as ramrod straight as if he were made out of iron, a hard light gleaming in his eyes. "Two things," he said, his tone clipped and quietly dangerous. "One, Yuffie Kisaragi comes back to Corel with that Materia. No exceptions."

"Agreed," Vincent said.

"Second thing," Rufus said, plowing on over Vincent like a ruthless storm. "I never told Tseng any of this." He fixed Vincent in his withering stare. "So how in high heaven and earth did he know?"

The Planet's rotation seemed to hiccup for a moment. "You didn't?" Vincent asked, amazed, and then at Rufus' cold stare, a faint feeling of dread crept over him. "You didn't," he said flatly. "I see. How interesting."

"We must now add a third thing to our agenda," Rufus said, and reached into his pocket to pull out a small phone. He flipped it open, pushed one button, jammed the thing to his ear. "Shinra here," he said after a moment. "I need to see Tseng right away. Immediately. This instant. Tell him to report to my office and remain there until I speak with him. Tell him that is a direct order."

"There's no point in that now," came a familiar, halting voice from the doorway, and Rufus whirled around, fingers twitching at his belt for the gun hidden under his long coat. Vincent did not turn, and after that brief second he saw Rufus' hand drop away. He could guess at what had happened and why Rude was here. He lay back down against his pillow and moved his gaze to the door, where Rude was leaning heavily, his face ghastly pale.

"You're supposed to be resting," Rufus began, and Rude shook his head weakly.

"We've got a situation on our hands, sir. Our bank accounts have all been emptied. Tseng's gone."


	12. Chapter 11: Rude

Before we begin, I'd just like to thank all you guys who have been reading, and especially those who have been reviewing and emailing me about this fic! I'm really excited about writing it, and I've been having a blast. Thanks!!!

--

_XI. Rude_

Rufus had ordered him to go back to bed, but Rude couldn't do that. Not with a potential enemy on the loose, not with the organization in disarray and their financial situation in shreds. Not with Reno in the shape he was in, which Rude suspected was only slightly better than someone on injured status, though Reno hadn't suffered a scratch in last night's escapade.

Tseng's office was locked, but Rufus had a master key, and it had been no difficult feat to unlock the heavy wooden door. Rude had been too late for that ceremonious entry, having been still five floors down waiting for the elevator because he didn't think his body would hold up from pounding up five flights of stairs. Rufus, who was not about to let his bad leg stop him, hadn't been patient enough to wait.

By the time he got there, there were five Green Earth finance employees digging through what remained of the files in Tseng's desk, two of their technicians dismantling his computer, another one rummaging through a file cabinet under Rufus' eagle-eyed gaze. Reno was not there. Elena was standing guard by the door.

"Hi," he said to her, a little short of breath.

The petite woman with the gun stared at him, eyes going up to his face and then down to his bandaged side. "You look near death," she said, and then her face softened. "I heard what happened. Go back to bed."

Rude shook his head. "Can't." He surveyed the situation again, saw Rufus glance up briefly at him and make eye contact before going back to his hurried consultation with file cabinet guy. "What happened?"

Elena looked sour. "I can't say I know. I was in the office going over some reports and stuff, you know, the usual, and I get a phone call from Reno saying get my ass down here. And here I'm upset because I have five reports due at twenty-hundred hours and I've timed it perfectly so that if I don't do ANYTHING but sit there for the next three hours, I'll get them all in on time."

Rude nodded patiently. "And?"

"Reno says, 'Tseng is missing.' And I'm like, 'What?'" Her sour expression intensified, and Rude wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that she and Tseng had once been a couple, if not quite lovers. He had never felt it his place to pry, and Elena had never deigned to talk about it, which, for Elena, meant that it was really no one's business. He waited for her to continue, but she had stopped, her eyes staring past him, a little unfocused, remembering. Rude knew how that was, too.

Finally, she said, "The bastard."

He couldn't quite wrap his mind around the fact that Tseng might have just betrayed not only Green Earth and Rufus Shinra's dream, but also more than fifteen years of what he and Reno and Elena and all the rest had seen as an unbreakable friendship, a brotherhood forged in blood. No, he thought, it couldn't be. It was all a mistake and they would sort it out soon. Aloud, he said, "I wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet, Elena."

"You're going to tell me that it's always my weak point," she told him, "but you'd be wrong. I'm not jumping to conclusions. Tseng won't be back." She squared her shoulders, eyes narrowing. "And if he does try and crawl back home, I'll shoot him right between the eyes."

That sounded a little extreme to Rude, but he looked at Elena's clenched fists and the way she stood, rigid and unflexing, and he realized that she was angrier than he had ever seen her. It was, he reflected, almost like Tseng had betrayed her personally, as if by the simple act of walking out on them he had given her a personal shove.

As all this passed through Rude's head, he then realized that Elena was still in love with Tseng.

"I understand," he told her, and she stared at him uncomprehendingly. Perhaps she thought he was being cold, stoic Rude, but he couldn't think of anything else to say. He would not think of Tifa, would not think of how she had not even told him goodbye as she had left Corel. He wondered if she would be back, or if all this finally had become too much to bear for her, because he had always loved her much more than she had loved him.

_If she loved you at all_, the little voice whispered inside his head.

He shook his head a little bit to get rid of it, wondering if he was going senile already. But no, it was only Rufus waving to him, so he nodded to Elena, leaving her standing there looking a bit lost and alone in the doorway, and went over to the man who he had served for so many years. "The verdict?" he said quietly.

Rufus shifted his weight on his cane. His eyes were hard. "I have no idea why Tseng would do this to us," he said. "This is totally unexpected. I never..." he trailed off.

Rude almost reached out to touch him, to lay a hand on his arm, something. But this was Rufus Shinra, and old habits were hard to break, so he didn't. "There must be some mistake," he said.

Rufus smiled coldly. "Tseng does not make mistakes."

Rude knew that too. This was not some spur-of-the-moment crime, not for someone of Tseng's standing and caliber, not as a former Turk. The only conclusion he could draw was that Tseng had been methodically planning this for some time, plotting his course and concealing his footprints, and for some reason, all of the people who had called themselves closest to him had somehow missed it.

Rude wondered if Tseng had ever considered him a friend. The logical conclusion, he thought, would be no. But that didn't make any sense either, because they had been friends. He would have died for Tseng. He would still die for him.

Would he?

"You, on the other hand," Rufus said, and he realized that the other man had been speaking and he hadn't been listening.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I was thinking."

"You need to go back and rest." Rufus smiled again, this time more genuinely, though full of worry and shadows. "I'll call you a cab."

"Where's Reno?"

Rufus looked like he was about to say something, and then changed his mind, and said, "I don't know. Elena said she'd seen him on his way downstairs when she arrived. I assumed he was going to do some more digging."

"I need to find Reno," Rude said. Rufus frowned, and Rude held up one hand. "I promise I will return to the hospital right afterwards. I'll call a cab myself."

"I trust you," Rufus said, and nodded towards the door. Rude didn't need to look to know that he was nodding to Elena, and that she would understand that she was in charge of his well-being now. "Don't go haring after any dream-monsters this time."

_Not even your dream-monsters?_ Rude thought silently to himself, but he nodded to Rufus and exited the room, nodded again to Elena as he passed her, and she raised one eyebrow.

"Half an hour and your ass is in a cab back to the hospital, no excuses!"

Reno would have given her some smart comment. Rude wasn't up-to-date on his sarcasm, so he nodded again and headed to the stairwell. Going down the stairs would probably be easier than going up, and he had an inkling that Reno was on just the next floor down.

He found the red-haired man in the building's atrium, just like he'd thought. The finance building's atrium wasn't large, nor were its glass-windowed confines large enough to house a decent variety of plants, but it was quiet and dark now with the falling of night, and Reno had always liked quiet places to think. His friend was sitting on a bench, arms draped over the back, legs spreadeagled, looking as exhausted as he probably felt.

"Go home," Reno said to him.

"Take your own advice," Rude returned, walking around to the front of the bench and nudging Reno aside so he could take a seat on the corner that was left.

They sat in silence for a while and Rude watched the scenery outside the windows idly. It was dark enough in the atrium that the windows still afforded a good snapshot view of the center of the Green Earth grounds, illuminated by the occasional car's headlights and pricked by a few streetlamps around the central driveway. But all in all, it was dark and he could see the stars.

"I've never been to Cosmo Canyon," he said suddenly, and he could feel Reno's frown.

"What?"

"The stars," Rude told him. "I hear that you can see them big and up close there. Like you're standing on the edge of the Lifestream, about to jump in."

"I feel like that at the moment," Reno said. "But in the end, I'm always too scared to jump."

Rude waited for the silence to stretch, and then he said, "What happened with Tseng?"

Reno gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. "What happened? I failed, that's what happened. Your favorite fucking failure, that's what I am. Always 'almost, but not quite' whenever the shit hits the fan."

"Tseng betrayed the company on his own," Rude said. "You didn't contribute to that whatsoever."

When Reno didn't answer, Rude looked over at the other man's shadowy silhouette and was surprised to see that Reno had sat up straight, clenching both hands together, trembling. "I almost did," he said. "I almost helped him. I almost bought into it."

"But you didn't," Rude said, not trying to be soothing or helpful, but just laying out the facts like he always did. It was one thing he was good at. "Tseng's gone, and you're here now because you realized what he was going to do."

"Realized too late, you mean."

"Stop beating yourself up about it," Rude began, and Reno slammed the palm of his hand down hard on the iron of the bench.

"Dammit, Rude!"

Rude opened his mouth to say he was sorry, thought about it for a moment, and then sat back in silence. He waited. The stars glimmered outside the window. He heard the pounding of feet on the stairway, faint and echoing, and then a voice - Rufus'? - shouting orders, and then silence again.

"I wish I'd never met her," Reno said at last, low and desperate.

Her? Rude rolled the possibilities around in his head. Reno could be talking about his most recent ex-girlfriend, but he had barely known the girl before they'd called it quits, so that probably wasn't the answer. Not Tifa, unless his fiancee was secretly having an affair with Reno behind Rude's back, and he didn't think that would ever happen. Tifa was too honest. 'Her' could not possibly refer to Elena, who was so upset over Tseng's departure that she had barely spoken to Rude at all half an hour ago, and she and Reno had never been more than partners in crime.

"Yuffie?" Rude said.

"Smart, pal," Reno said. "Real smart."

"This is unexpected. What did Yuffie do now?"

"She's fucking insane," Reno spat to the nearest tree. "I can barely think when she's around. Every time I think I have her figured out, she does a complete turnaround on me. I've known the kid for fifteen years - you'd think I would have it all down by now!"

Rude began to see the big picture. "Yuffie left for Wutai a few hours ago, you know," he said. Testing.

Reno's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I know. Good riddance. Not that we've anything left to say to each other anyway."

"You had an argument?"

"She slammed me against the floor and bit me. After I nearly ran her through the wall. I think that counts."

Rude raised one uncomprehending eyebrow. "She _bit_ you?"

He could sense Reno's embarrassment, and barely resisted a bit of a grin. It was almost too easy, but he wasn't going to let his friend take the easy way out.

"We were having a...discussion. About some Materia."

"The Materia Vincent gave her, you mean. What on earth made you think you were going to be able to get it back from her?"

Reno gave him a scathing look that Rude couldn't see very well in the dark. At least he assumed it was scathing. "Even you know about that?"

"I'm a good eavesdropper."

"Tseng...ordered...me to get it from her. She'd offered to let me use her room for a nap since she was going out, and I figured I could just steal it while she was away. Easy. No confrontation."

"But you like confrontation."

"I'm getting old," Reno said. "I don't like it as much as I used to. Especially with a girl who I'd like nothing better than to kill one moment and then to-" he stopped.

Rude did smile then, though it was dark enough that he hoped Reno didn't see. "Nothing untoward happened, I hope?"

Reno shifted uncomfortably. "Nothing like that." A pause. "Not really."

"Are you in love with her?"

They'd had these types of conversations before, casual affairs in which Reno would ask him if he still liked Tifa and Rude would say yes, and then he'd ask Reno how his love life was going, and Reno would give him some dismal prediction on his girlfriend of the month. But this time, Rude felt, it was somehow different. Yuffie was not the girlfriend of the month, not someone who would flit in and out of their lives without a ripple.

"She's practically Rufus' girl," Reno said at last. "I couldn't do that."

"Perhaps Rufus thinks so," Rude countered. "As for Yuffie, I think she's too preoccupied to think of our great leader as anything more than a good friend. Now you, on the other hand-"

"Get off it," Reno growled. "I get the point. I kissed her, Rude, that's all. Totally unexpected, caught off guard, and not something I'd want to do again."

Rude sat back. "All right."

"I'm serious, man. I don't know what was the matter with me. I'm over it now."

"Which is why you're sitting here in the dark of the atrium of the finance building depressed."

He saw Reno cross shadowy arms across his chest. "Let me get this straight. Tseng just betrayed Green Earth, the organization is probably officially bankrupt, Rufus is as pissed off as I've seen him in years, Denzel is missing, Vincent Valentine is dying of Geostigma, there are unknown monsters on the prowl in Nibelheim, and you think I'm depressed because Yuffie Kisaragi won't go out with me?!"

"Well," Rude said. "Yes."

"You're fucking nuts."

The game had gone far enough, Rude decided, and he laughed softly. "Sorry. I know things are pretty bleak right now. I'm not doing too well myself."

"Yeah," Reno told him dryly. "I noticed."

"But I figure," he continued, "if we can't laugh at ourselves once in a while, how are we going to be able to go on?"

"You're not going all philosophical on me, are you?"

"Tifa told me that once." He tried to keep the wistful tone out of his voice, but it was Reno, and Reno could read him like no one else. Not even Tifa.

"I'm real sorry about that. I didn't even think she'd leave without letting you know."

Rude shrugged. "She's her own woman. We'll be all right."

Reno didn't answer, and Rude thought about Yuffie Kisaragi, on a ship heading away from Corel with Vincent's Materia in tow. He hadn't managed to eavesdrop far enough into the conversation between the former Turk and Rufus to figure out exactly why that Materia was important, but knowing Vincent, he wouldn't have given it to Yuffie without dire warning. In retrospect, Yuffie was probably the best person he could have entrusted it to. If he'd handed it over to Reno, it would be in Tseng's hands by now.

Even not knowing what that Materia was, Rude was experienced enough to assume that would have been disastrous.

"We have to get that Summon Materia back," he said abruptly.

"Shouldn't you be thinking about more important things, like going back to the hospital?"

Rude frowned. "I'm quite serious. The way Vincent and Rufus were talking about that Materia, it's vital that it be back in our hands."

"Yuffie's smart."

"Smarter than Tseng?"

Reno considered this. "I don't know," he said at last.

"I know Yuffie can take care of herself. The fact is, however, that Tseng is now an unknown quantity. We don't know who or what he's allied with, but I do think he is allied with someone, because the Tseng I knew was cunning. He was no simple thief. And I am not naive enough to believe that the attacks on us and Vincent were pure chance."

"You're talking a lot tonight," Reno said sourly. "Stole all of Elena's vocabulary, have you?"

Rude sighed. "Help me out, please."

"Fine. So Yuffie's got the Materia we need. How we gonna get it back?" Reno glanced around at the atrium. "And I wonder if someone's got this place bugged?"

The hairs pricked on the back of Rude's neck. "Let's go," he said, and Reno pushed himself off the bench, holding out one hand to pull Rude to his feet. His legs didn't seem to be working, and he was probably an hour past Elena's half-hour time limit, but he thought she would understand.

They rode the elevator back down to the ground floor in silence. The building was quiet and dark now. Rufus and the security detail had long gone, probably taking everything out of Tseng's office in the process. He followed Reno out the back doors and into the rear lot of the finance building, half-filled with gravel and sand and scratched-out parking places for the few employees who drove to work. The moon was high over the Corel Mountains, bathing everything in eerie white.

"If I were Yuffie Kisaragi," Reno said at last, "Where would I go?"

"I would not go back to Wutai," Rude said.

He expected Reno to counter that, but instead his friend looked thoughtful. "You know, I thought she sounded kinda scared when she told me she was going home. I thought it was...because of what had just happened...but maybe I was wrong. And she was hanging onto that Materia way too hard for someone who just wanted to add another one to her collection."

"I don't think she went back to Wutai for two reasons. One, it's too far from the action. Two, she isn't the type of person to sit with an unknown quantity on her hands."

"Maybe she's outgrown the action," Reno suggested, and Rude didn't say anything. After a moment, Reno said, "Or maybe not."

"If I were Yuffie Kisaragi," Rude said, "and I'd just been entrusted with a piece of a secret and instructed not to let anyone else know, I'd head somewhere isolated, a place where I could find out exactly what that Materia was. A place that has the knowledge for something like that, but where I'd be left alone."

Understanding dawned. "Ah," said Reno. "You think she's gone to Cosmo Canyon."

"I'm in no shape to travel, unfortunately. And I don't want this getting out to the others. We lost Tseng; I don't know if anyone else is on his side."

"Whatever side that is," Reno muttered. "Do you trust Highwind?"

"No," Rude said. "I'd like to, but unfortunately no. Do you-?"

Reno snorted. "I wouldn't stoop so far as to steal a ship. I could never show my face around here again. And Cosmo Canyon's not that far. I'll steal someone's bike instead."


	13. Chapter 12: Yuffie

_XII. Yuffie_

The only things Yuffie hated more than flying were flying on either an empty stomach or a full stomach. She'd grabbed a breakfast bar from the basket of goodies in her hotel room before she departed, but just the thought of food had made her nauseous, so she'd ended up throwing it away. And now, as her tiny biplane dipped through turbulent air of the clouded morning sky, traveling east from Gongaga toward Cosmo Canyon, she was paying the price.

They'd thought she had left for Wutai. At least, she hoped so; she'd made a great show of boarding the ship off to the new airship port on the northern coast, where she'd left her small boat parked in one of the coves. It was no fancy yacht, but it did the job, and it was a sight better than the Tiny Bronco. As far as she knew, the boat was still parked out there. The airship had docked and Yuffie had been down the ramp and up the stairs of the ship parked next to it, bound for Gongaga. By that time, the sun had set, and she was tired, restless, hungry, and worn out, but found she couldn't sleep.

It was not only the airsickness. Every time she tried to close her eyes, she felt Reno's lips close down on hers, almost bruisingly commanding in their possessiveness. It hadn't been her first kiss - there had been a few boys in Wutai behind her father's back during her early teenage years before AVALANCHE, some playing around that hadn't gotten much further than making out behind some of the old ruins on the outskirts of the city. But that had been years ago, and ever since the war, it was as if she'd given up any thought of romance. It was Wutai or love, she'd thought, and she'd chosen Wutai.

Besides, she had never even considered dating someone who could not understand what she'd been through, and that was limiting herself to a rather small selection. Cloud and Cid were taken, Barret was more like her father, and Vincent was too untouchable. That left the former members of Shinra, and Yuffie hadn't been too fond of that idea until she'd begun keeping in touch with Rufus Shinra. If that kiss last night had to be from one of them, she'd caught herself thinking, why couldn't it have been Rufus?

She'd liked Reno before the events in her hotel room. She had wished fervently that she could have shown him that Materia, could have begged him to take it from her. But she'd sworn to Vincent on that fear-filled flight back to Corel that among other things, she wouldn't give that Materia up to anyone, and keeping oaths was one thing she knew how to do well. If only Reno had understood that, things wouldn't be so complicated now, and she wouldn't be sitting here behind the controls of a tiny biplane circling Cosmo Canyon's outer rim, red-eyed and food-deprived, remembering the desperate fury of that kiss. Reno's body was long and lean with the physique of a long-distance runner, and when Yuffie unfocused, she remembered again the curve of his neck in her startled vision as he leaned forward to imprison her between his hands.

He'd smelled like salt and sweat and three-day old unwashed clothes, but in the mix of that there was a scent that was uniquely him, musky and lingering.

_Stop_, she thought to herself, struggling to keep her eyes open and feeling her cheeks burn as the memory surfaced again. _Just stop. He's a casual friend. You were both tired. It's nothing._

The plane broke below the clouds then, and she could see Cosmo Canyon below, shrouded in fog and mist. The place had always struck her as lonely, but now it looked abandoned, ghostly in its isolation. For a moment, a shred of panic gripped her heart that it might have ended up like Nibelheim, but then she saw a thin spiral of hearth-smoke wisp up from one of the chimney peaks, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

She had a bit of trouble landing the plane, as she always did, but the biplane finally skidded to a halt on a thin scree of loose rocks and debris. Cid was going to kill her, she decided, climbing down from the cockpit and surveying the dust and scratches her rough landing had cost the plane's paint job. At least nothing was broken.

There was no sentry party, no surveillance system here. In Wutai, she'd installed posts around the perimeter with scanning equipment, checkpoints manned with twenty-four hour patrols. Even in Corel, she'd seen the signs of police stations on the outskirts of the city. It was as if Cosmo Canyon belonged to an earlier time, an era where the primitive notion of trust and honor still reigned.

It had been like that in Wutai once, her father had told her. Before Shinra. Before the war.

She forced her tired legs up the gravel hillside path, hoping that the Canyon's gates were open and they were accepting visitors. She didn't know why they wouldn't be. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Geostigma and Sephiroth were things of the past. It seemed strange to realize that she was one of the few people on the Planet who feared otherwise. The image of Vincent's diseased arm flashed into her mind, temporarily displacing any stray thoughts of Reno, and she shivered.

"Welcome to Cosmo Canyon! Ma'am?"

Yuffie jumped at the voice. It was only then that she realized she'd reached the top of the hill and was standing before Cosmo Canyon's rough-hewn wooden gates, where the signal fire was still burning brightly, crackling and cheerful. The man standing there was about her age, with an easy smile on his face and long dark hair tied back. His eyes strayed to the shuriken strapped to her back, widening slightly, but he made no comment.

"I..." she said, and hesitated. "Is Cosmo Canyon accepting visitors?"

The man looked puzzled. "Of course. If you'll just fill out this form here, and sign-" He pushed an electronic touchscreen into her hands, and she took the attached pressure pen dazedly, filled in Name (_Kisaragi_), Town of Origin (_Wutai_), Age (_31_), Previous Schooling (_grade school_), and Contact Information (_none of your business_). She paused at Purpose of Visit. Materia study? Lifestream Research? The man seemed to be impatiently waiting, so she finally scrawled Visiting Friend into the blank, and handed it back to him.

"You have a friend here?" the man inquired politely, slipping the pad into a holder by the gate. "We'd be glad to look up a name for you in our directory. All our researchers are in-camp at the moment."

He hadn't recognized her name. Yuffie wasn't sure if she was insulted or relieved, but instead she said, "I'd like to be directed to the lord of Cosmo Canyon, please."

The man looked startled. "I'm afraid that's highly improbable, ma'am. The lord of the Canyon is not available."

"You said that all of your researchers were in-camp and available," Yuffie pointed out.

"Lord Nanaki isn't considered a researcher, ma'am. You'll have to make an appointment to see him."

She considered pulling rank, but even the thought of that was tiresome, so she said, "No, thank you. It's not urgent."

"Ma'am-"

"Thanks for your hospitality," she told him firmly, and moved past him through the wooden archway. To his credit, he didn't protest or try to offer her more help or information, as she was half afraid he was going to. If Nanaki was here, she'd find him herself.

Cosmo Canyon had changed little in the past fifteen years, and little prickles of nostalgia gave her goosebumps. There was the fire they'd all sat around that night after they were afraid Red XIII was going to leave them. There were the ladder-stars they'd climbed to reach Bugenhagen's observatory. There was the same morning star in the lightening sky over the dusty red cliffs. Suddenly, she missed Cloud so much she could cry.

_It's all different now_, she reminded herself fiercely, blinking back the tears and settling the Conformer's strap more comfortably over her shoulder. The red Summon Materia that Vincent had given her was the only Materia she had, nestled firmly in the rightmost slot. She reached behind to touch it, as if to reassure herself it was really there. It had been a strained flight back to Corel, with Vincent curled up beside her in the copilot's seat in a bleeding fetal position, talking to her about the Materia, about the cave, but only in the most general of terms.

"But Vince," she'd hissed, frustrated and angry and scared. "What is it?"

"I'm afraid that it has something to do with Cloud," he'd said, the only answer he'd give no matter how she pressed him. "Hopefully I'm wrong."

So she'd taken matters into her own hands. The most straightforward way to find out what that Materia was was to use it. But Yuffie was no fool - she'd heard her share of stories as a child about Materia that had blown up in people's faces, or Materia that had suddenly exploded into giant monstrosities that turned on their users and killed them. Given the dubious origins of this one, either of the above might be likely scenarios. No, Yuffie wanted to make it back to Corel and Vincent and Rufus in one piece. _And Reno?_ her mind nagged, and she growled at it, _he doesn't matter right now._

It looked like several of the researchers, white-bearded, professor types by the looks of them, were early risers. There were two sitting around the central campfire, and she supposed it would be all right if she walked over and joined them. She knew the way up to Bugenhagen's observatory, where Nanaki's quarters were, but she didn't feel like facing her old friend at the moment.

As she took a seat on one of the big logs around the fire, she saw that one of her fellow fire-sitters was actually a woman, though she was dressed in the same loose clothes and comfortable shoes as the white-haired man sitting next to her. He smiled at her.

"Morning."

"Good morning," she responded and barely stifled a yawn. The woman laughed.

"Long night?"

Yuffie nodded, unslinging her shuriken and placing it carefully next to her, leaning on her leg. "It was a long flight from Gongaga."

"Your first time here to Cosmo Canyon?" the woman asked. Yuffie shook her head.

"I haven't been back in years though. Nine years, maybe? Ten? I can't quite remember."

The man stood up and it took her several seconds to realize that he was offering something to her - a mug grasped in one hand. She reached out to take it, realized it was coffee, and for a moment the kindly professor-like gentleman's visage wavered, transformed into Rufus Shinra, leaning heavily on his cane, blond hair glimmering in the dying light of day, with a cup of coffee in his hand.

The tears did spill over, then. She wiped them away angrily with the back of her hand and took the cup of coffee with trembling fingers. She heard the woman say, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Yuffie managed, reseating herself on the log bench and cradling the cup in her hands. "I just need to rest, I think." She took a cup of the coffee. It was pleasantly warm, settling in her stomach with just the right amount of heat, and suddenly she was ravenously hungry.

"Are the kitchens open yet?" she inquired politely, and the man shook his head.

"It's another hour, but I've got a sandwich, if you're hungry."

She tried not to sound too eager. "If you don't mind. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday."

The woman tsked, sounding quite motherly, as the man dug a slightly flattened sandwich out of a satchel at his feet. Yuffie didn't care. She accepted the packet and wolfed it down in three bites.

"I'm Sassan," the man said with some amusement as she cleaned the finishings of the bread and cheese from between her teeth. "Sassan Monk. This is my wife Harin."

Belatedly, Yuffie realized that she had been sitting here with these people for almost five minutes and hadn't introduced herself. Two days in Corel and she was already losing her mind. "I apologize," she said, standing up and sketching a quick bow. "Yuffie Kisaragi, from Wutai."

The woman's lips made a little "o" shape, and Yuffie felt slightly embarrassed. "The lady of Wutai?" Harin said, and Yuffie nodded self-consciously.

"The same. I'm usually not so..." she fumbled for a word. "Hungry?"

Both of them laughed. "It's an honor," Sassan said. "We're from Kalm, just here on holiday and to do a little research."

"What are you studying?" Yuffie said, hoping to make some small talk as she finished her coffee. Instead, Sassan said, "Oh, this and that, little things mostly," and his wife's expression went very guarded. Apparently, whatever they were here for was somehow secretive, but she supposed that was to be expected. Since the war ended, the study of anything to do with Mako or the Lifestream was frowned upon. Forget that Aeris' water had healed Geostigma - people now were more obsessed with moving on with their lives, building bigger and higher and faster. Privately, Yuffie had thought that it was more like Shinra without Shinra, and to her surprise, Rufus had agreed with her.

_It just goes to show_, he'd written a few years ago, _that the world didn't need me after all. They can slowly poison themselves just fine without me._

Yuffie had shot back that Rufus had missed the point, that Shinra's methods had been more like bashing people with massive hammers than slow poisoning, but now sitting here in the clean air and brilliant sunrise of Cosmo Canyon, she wished that Rufus was here with her. He would understand.

She finished her coffee and stood, stretched slightly, and slung the Conformer back over her shoulder. Handing the cup to Sassan, she bowed to him again. "It was nice to meet you," she said. "I hope to see you again."

To her surprise, he stood and bowed back to her. "It was an honor, lady," he said, and she smiled at him as she left the fire's warm glow. Perhaps he was just saying that for the etiquette of it. She was sure her face was caked with dirt and grime and that she stunk - like Reno the other afternoon, when she'd offered to lend him her room.

"Oh stop it, Yuffie," she muttered, and stomped back across the expanse of red dirt and canyon grass to the door where the materia and weapons shops used to be. She was not surprised to find that they were gone now, and that the space had been converted to bunks for visitors. The room was vacant. The man at the gate hadn't said anything to her about reserving a bunk, so she shrugged, dumped her pack and gear down on the nearest bed, and headed to the attached bathroom to wash her face.

The cold water rinse combined with coffee seemed to clear her head a bit, and she grabbed the Conformer and headed up the stairs, to Bugenhagen's old place.

She was half afraid the doors would all be locked. Instead, as she stepped out onto the second landing, she saw that a new set of ladders had been built into the cliff walls, leading straight up to the old man's former offices. As she scaled the top of the ladder and raised her hand to knock, she fervently hoped that Nanaki was there.

He was. The door opened gently, and suddenly there was a familiar gravelly voice exclaiming from below - "Yuffie!"

Her knees buckled and she dropped to the ground, emotion washing over her. It was the lack of sleep, because usually she wasn't so teary-eyed. Nanaki hadn't changed much, though he'd filled out a little bit and his coat looked thicker and wilder. She wanted to hug him, but he had never liked anyone touching him, so she simply held out one hand and he dropped his nose into it and licked her palm. His large, expressive eyes, so much more intelligent than any animal's, looked pleased and then concerned.

"What's wrong, Yuffie? Why the sudden visit?"

"Nanaki," she said. "May I come in? I really need your help."


	14. Chapter 13: Tifa

_XIII. Tifa_

Ten hours and five monsters later, Tifa roared through the gates of Costa del Sol on Reno's bike, ignoring the startled flocks of seagulls scattering in all directions and the isolated tourists on the bridge above the town's main entrance, who looked scandalized at the noise she was making. She could apologize, but she was sick of apologizing. It seemed like she had spent her whole life apologizing and now had nothing to show for it, and so she simply gunned the bike through the center of town, screeched to a halt in front of the marina, and twisted the key in the ignition.

Everything fell silent.

The lapping of the waves on the wooden pier seemed abnormally quiet to her ears after hours of deserted highway and the motorcycle's banging. She made a note to tell Reno to get his bike's drive shaft fixed - if she ever saw him again. Her upper left arm stung, the skin half-caked over with dried blood and bits of forming scab from where one of the monsters had raked her with a particularly wicked-looking claw, but she hadn't used a Cure spell on that one. The pain reminded her of why she was here and where she was going. Tifa Lockhart, the AVALANCHE member, the fighter, the martial artist, going back to Edge because she hadn't been needed in Corel after all. She felt a little guilty taking Reno's bike, but he'd left it sitting in the middle of the square after coming back from Nibelheim. Part of her wished she'd stayed and asked him what they had found, but she was glad she'd left, after all, because whatever had happened most likely had not been good.

Rude had been glad to see her, of course. They all had. But even if she had gone to Nibelheim, what could she have done? She was tired of chasing after monsters out of the shadows, tired of following Cloud's voice to end up at locked doors and boarded up houses.

_Give me some time_, she had told Rude, but she wasn't even sure what that meant.

She bought a ticket for the passenger ship heading back to Junon, put Reno's motorcycle into marina storage, and found a good seat by the window on the mostly empty lower deck. Sometime during the voyage, she fell asleep, waking with a start when the shuddering of the boat signaled the beginning of docking procedures. Junon was a sleepy marine town now, with the old Shinra barracks torn down and replaced with a long stretch of piers and boat repair facilities, dockyards, and passenger terminals. Reclaiming Denzel's bike from the short-term storage locker where she'd stowed it before her trip, she walked the motorcycle through the unfamiliar new city, winding her way to the lift platform that had replaced Shinra's elevator.

The old lower fishing town hadn't changed. Tifa parked her bike by the front of the inn and then headed up some rickety flights of stairs leading to an old weatherbeaten shanty on the second floor. From inside came the sound of voices, the words blurred and indistinct, but very clearly arguing. For a moment she hesitated, then knocked and called, "Priscilla?"

"Who is it?" called a woman's voice from inside, and then she heard a man's voice answer, too low for her to make out the words. "You mind your own business," the female voice said irritably, and the door opened.

The young woman who stood there was golden-haired, green-eyed, half a head shorter than Tifa with an upturned button nose and scowl on her lips that quickly dissolved into a look of surprise and then bloomed into a smile.

"I'm sorry for dropping in unannounced," Tifa said. Priscilla shook her head quickly, holding out her arms and giving Tifa a quick hug.

"Oh, not at all!" She peered around Tifa for a moment before returning her eyes to her face. "Marlene's not with you this time?"

Tifa smiled as Priscilla stepped aside and motioned her into the small, well-lit room. "Marlene was busy, unfortunately. I just returned from Costa del Sol." Priscilla hissed suddenly and it was only then that Tifa remembered her injured arm. "I'm all right," she assured the girl hastily, slipping off her boots and placing them by the door mat. "It was only a small monster."

She was amused as Priscilla shuddered. "Any monster's too large for me," she said, as a man came up beside her with a question in his eyes. This must have been the one Priscilla had been arguing with, but she couldn't see any signs of anger in his face. He looked very calm. "Tifa, this is my husband Munroe. Munroe, Tifa Lockhart."

"Priscilla's told me a lot about you," he said politely, putting out his hand. Tifa shook it. She didn't know that Priscilla had gotten married. Munroe was a big man with a strong, square chin and broad shoulders, dwarfing Priscilla's lithe frame, a bit reminiscent of how she and Rude looked when they were standing together. A wave of homesickness and guilt swept over her, but she pushed it away and said, "I'm staying downstairs at the inn, but I thought I would come see you and let you know I'm in town."

"Oh, Tifa," Priscilla said indignantly, "I keep telling you we have that spare room in the back."

"I don't want to intrude on you-" Tifa began, and the other girl laughed and took Tifa's dirty hands in hers. Priscilla's hands were rough with a sincerity that spoke of the hard life of Junon's fisherfolk.

"Stay," she said, and Tifa knew that an invitation was an invitation in Junon, and one didn't ask twice.

"I'll go collect my things in a minute," she said. The couches in their small living room looked inviting. "May I-"

"Oh!" Priscilla looked flustered. "Please. Sit. I'm forgetting my manners. Would you like something to drink?"

"Water, please," Tifa said. Munroe made it to the couch before her, straightening up a few cushions from beside the wall that looked like they'd been thrown haphazardly at someone. Tifa didn't ask. "Thank you," she told him, and to her discomfort, Munroe's eyes flicked to her face, staring at her intently for several seconds. Tifa was used to being stared at for one thing or another, but men usually stared at other parts of her, and his stare was sharp, somehow unnerving. She cleared her throat.

"You're welcome," he said finally, smiling at her with a smile that did not reach his eyes, and left the room. A moment later, Priscilla returned with a glass of water in hand, and Tifa wondered if she should mention the incident, but decided that it was of no consequence.

Priscilla took a seat on the couch beside her. "So, what news from Midgar?"

Tifa explained the events of the past few days, leaving out the details about Nibelheim as best as she could, focusing on the fact that Denzel was missing. Rude's injuries she put down to a particularly vicious monster on the outskirts of the still-wild territories of North Corel, and Priscilla nodded in sympathy.

"Hopefully it's all a misunderstanding and Denzel's out for work."

"Reeve has a tendency to pounce on the drama," Tifa said, "so I'm hoping. He's always been possessive of Denzel anyway, since Cloud left." She looked down at her hands clasped in her lap, and the movement sent the light sparkling across her left hand, on the ring she wore on her fourth finger. Priscilla noticed.

"Tifa! Are you and Rude-"

She moved one hand to cover the ring. "We're engaged," she said shortly. "It's been...a rough few weeks."

Priscilla touched her shoulder gently. "It'll work out." Her gaze went towards the door leading to the kitchen, and Tifa knew she was thinking of Munroe. She said, "I didn't know you'd gotten married."

The girl flushed. "Six months ago. Granddad had always wanted me to settle down with him - it had been pretty much promised from the time I was in grade school. But Munroe got a job with the Junon Ministry of Security, and he was away a lot." She touched her left hand self-consciously, and Tifa saw that the other girl wore no wedding ring. "The job pays the bills, barely. We didn't have any money for a wedding or a ring, so we just went to the courthouse and signed papers."

"He's good to you?" Tifa said.

Priscilla hesitated just a little too long, and Tifa felt the warning signals start to blink in her head. "I heard you two arguing when I was coming up the stairs," she said. "I had no idea you were engaged...it's been almost a year since I've seen you." Priscilla twisted the hem of her dress in her hands, and Tifa said hastily, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to-"

"It's fine," the girl said in a low voice. "He...he's not around much. This is the first week we've had to ourselves since we got married, really."

"Priscilla-"

"He wants me to get a job."

Tifa blinked. "You do have a job. Or are you not working for the fisherman's guild anymore?"

Priscilla hesitated again, then said roughly, "I am. But he wants me to get a real job."

She felt a flash of anger at the words just as Priscilla said hastily, "But enough about me. I'm just glad Rude's all right."

"He is," Tifa said. Munroe chose that moment to come into the room, and she saw how Priscilla hastily averted her eyes as the big man said, "You'd better let her go get her bags from downstairs."

She had plenty of time to dawdle and think on the walk down to the inn and on the way back. She was wary of Munroe, but that did not mean he was a bad person. A lot of the Junon men, she knew, were like this - authoritative, controlling, in charge. Priscilla's grandfather had been an old man, rather senile though friendly when they'd met, but he was the exception. It was their culture, and Tifa had no right to interfere.

There had been times in the past when she had almost longed for Rude to tell her something like Munroe had told Priscilla. Get up. Get a new job. Move to a new town. Get on with your life. She was, she reflected, constantly telling Rude what to do. But he'd never asked anything of her in return, seemingly content with what little they saw of each other with him being in North Corel and she being in Edge. His demand of her not to go to Nibelheim was the first time in a long time that he had tried to forbid her from doing something, and as usual, she had been angry. But wasn't that what she wanted? A man who would share her life and look out for her?

She thought she could find that in Cloud, but in the end Cloud had just been someone too pained by his own scars to share hers, too.

The back bedroom in Priscilla's house had been laid out for her, the bed turned down and the window opened. Priscilla cooked a nice dinner, and the three of them sat around her kitchen table and reminisced about old times, Munroe chiming in about developments in Junon. She noticed that the two of them still avoided looking at each other, though sometimes Munroe would glance at Priscilla with an odd look in his eyes when he thought she wasn't watching.

They said goodnight and Tifa put some ointment on her arm, checked to make sure the door was locked and the window closed, and went to bed. She fell asleep almost at once, into a dream where she was standing on the edge of a cliff with Rude, looking down into its narrow black depths where something was grinding, with a deep, throbbing sound that sounded eerily like the innards of a Shinra Mako reactor.

"Rude?" she said, and his arms came around her from behind.

"This isn't the time for this," she began, and then she realized his arms were not wrapping around her waist, but going upward, aiming for a tight chokehold around her throat. She opened her mouth to scream-

-and jerked awake, moonlight streaming in through the window, blankets pulled down around her ankles, and a very real pair of large, muscled arms wrapped around her neck, big hands going in for a chokehold.

Tifa did not pause to think. She twisted out of the bed, springing off the mattress with both hands and landing in a hard horse stance on the man's feet. He made an oomphing sound as the balls of her feet thudded into the bones of his toes. His hands went lax. She whipped one leg around and spun to the left, dragging him by one arm, and he cried out in pain as her grip twisted the shoulder joint in its socket.

"Bastard," she muttered, and then yanked upwards. A grisly cracking noise as his shoulder broke. He screamed. A door slammed open, almost masking the sound of a gun being cocked. A less trained fighter would not have noticed, but Tifa heard it. Instinctively, she raised her arms to fighting stance, waiting for her Materia to activate-

-and then realized that the Premium Heart was in her duffel bag, which was currently shoved under the bed.

"Tifa?" came Priscilla's voice. "Munroe?"

Munroe's eyes were twin silver bullets in the moonlight, hard and icy with deadly intent. Time seemed to crawl by as he raised his gun to her eye level, as she desperately calculated how to dive around him and reach the bed, crawl under it, and activate her weapon without being shot full of holes.

The bedroom door opened.

Munroe fired.

Tifa leapt to the side at the same time and the shot went wide, splintering into the bed's headboard. In the doorway, Priscilla's nightgown-clad silhouette screamed. Munroe whirled, pointing the gun at her, and Tifa saw her chance. She pounced forward, catching the man in the groin with a hard front snap kick, then using that momentum to club him in the face and send the gun flying out of his hand as she slid under the bed.

Her duffel was where she'd left it. She fumbled for the zipper as she heard Munroe slowly get to his knees, crawling for his gun, knowing that she'd left her legs exposed while her body was stuck under the low mattress and cursing herself. Zangan would be ashamed, she thought wildly as the zipper finally broke free and revealed her gloves, lying there with the blood of three monsters still caked on them, Materia gleaming dully in the dimness. She slid them on, slinging the bag over her shoulder and pushing off the floor in a cloud of dust.

"Priscilla!" she shouted. "Run!"

Munroe never had a chance. The Premium Heart was liquid lightning in her hands, and she felt the familiar gathering power tingle up and down her arms, throbbing in her chest like swelling heartbeats. When the bolt let loose, she barely heard him scream. She was already pounding out of the house, down the stairs three at a time. Outside there was a familiar roaring sound, and it was only after she'd gotten to the bottom of the stairs that she saw that Priscilla, still in her nightgown, had turned on her motorcycle.

"Munroe!" the girl cried, but Tifa shook her head mutely, vaulted into the seat and pushed the girl up behind her.

"Hold onto me. We're leaving."

"I can't leave him!"

"Yes," Tifa growled, kicking the bike up from the ground and gunning the engine, speeding out of Junon in an angry cough of smoke. "You can."


End file.
